#20 - Reinventing The Autograph

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dot pop up and we're so excited four minutes goes by that felt like four hours and all of a sudden nothing happened no purchase no nothing there was nothing to do on the site so we're like is he gonna buy is he gonna buy he didn't buy and then about five minutes later i get a dm on twitter and the dad's like hey your payment process isn't working my daughter loves cash this march i send you the instructions can you still get the video done we ended up getting that one done like her birthday was on a thursday this was a tuesday night cash was so mad at us he didn't do the video for like a week and even that was super unenthusiastic but this dad ended up getting this video and he filmed his daughter's response to it and that was really the impetus for the first reaction video and that was the moment when we really felt we had something that's an epic launch story i think it's unepic at the same time you know you're in a bad spot when you're hoping google analytics is broken and uh and so where do you you know just kind of like where do you think this goes what's the dream and how do you see this growing from here as we're learning more about this space i think there's a couple things that are really interesting to us number one we think that just the area under the curve of how much talent exists is expanding every day people are blown up on twitch they're blown up on tiktok we believe there's 2.5 million people on earth today that could qualify as talent on cameo but we believe that number is going to double in the next five years as some of these other platforms continue to manufacture new people so we think we have a business where number one they're more famous people today than they've ever been number two people are more famous now than they ever have been in history so we really think that that will enable us to find you know totally new talent that we have no idea like the next justin bieber is someone we probably will capture on the way up versus like us having to go and get the top one and we've seen people like bob menry for example that when we signed he had 80 thousand followers he has three million a year later so we really believe that by focusing on the long tail and mid tail we can actually capture people on the way up and that's going to be huge but as far as what's next for cameo i really believe it's all about facilitating these asynchronous conversation so we're really really interested in doing things that are more repeatable than maybe just like buying a video here and there like you had an amazing experience two years ago and maybe you haven't used the product again so how can we create product that gets you coming back time after time after time and we really think that that's going to be turning cameo into more of a two-way conversation right that would be i mean that would be a game changer that's a tough one but i built this thing i love the hustle behind it because you didn't overcomplicate you take a simple idea you took a basic fresh take on an old idea right autographs with a thing before today selfies you see that insight you realize that even though these people are online celebrities or real world celebrities connecting with fans is something they're always going to want to do and if you can make it frictionless and if you can make it affordable you can make a business around it and you've done that now if i'm listening to this and i'm inspired by this so there's a couple people i'm listening right might be some talent that's listening get on cameo if you've never done it before you should go check it out for the next birthday you know like for my mom's birthday i'm going to do this for example but like i've done maybe five cameos each time i'm like the star of the occasion because it is the most fun gift to give so if you're trying to buy a gift for somebody this is an amazing way to do it but who else is out there that should reach out to you from this how can people who are listening to this how can they help you how can they get in touch with you if they're inspired by kind of what they've heard so far number one we're hiring we're really looking to put the capital to use and hire some of the best people on earth and i think one thing different about us we're headquartered in chicago with kind of an hq two in la so we're not in the bay area at all but there's a lot of great talent from the midwest that's been looking for an opportunity to work in consumer back in chicago or there's great west coast talent that will not leave the west coast but venice beach is a pretty good alternative to san francisco so if you're a pm that's worked on searches worked in marketplaces worked in gaming pm engineers you know we're really excited to do that we just made a big hire on our marketing front we just brought stefan over who is the global marketing at tiktok he's our new cmo we're really looking to build that team up so if you're working on the future of the fan talent experience is something interesting we're hiring for a variety of roles right now and how do they follow you how do they email twitter where should people get in touch with you yeah you can find me on twitter at mrmr312 the chicago area code or you know cameo.com and i'm steven at cameo.com awesome man i appreciate you coming in make a pit stop and i'm coming to chicago