Cameo

Consumer/creator marketplaceUSA

New to Unitard

🤝 Acquired

Peak $1 BillionToday

~-90%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
Mar 2021
📈
Peak valuation
$1 Billion ’21
💔
Became a Unitard
Mar 2024
💸
Last valuation
~$100M

Current status

$28M Series D cramdown at <$100M (Mar 2024)

The rise & fall

6 moments · 2017–2024

The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.

2017

Founded in Chicago

A marketplace where celebrities record personalized video shout-outs for fans.

Wikipedia

Mar 2021

The peak: $1B for celebrity shout-outs$1B

A pandemic-boom Series C values the marketplace at about $1B, and aggressive expansion follows.

Fortune

2022–23

Demand normalizes; layoffs stack up

As the boom unwinds, Cameo cuts staff in repeated rounds.

The Information

2022–24

From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–24

Glassdoor reviews from the post-boom years described strategy and priorities that changed every few months and repeated layoff rounds, with employees recalling that money still went to parties and trips even as colleagues were let go.

Mar 2024

The cramdown: slips out of the club

A $28M Series D resets the valuation below $100M — roughly a tenth of the peak — and unicorn status is gone.

The Information

💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.

How it happened

Cameo is a US marketplace where celebrities sell personalized video shout-outs to fans. It rode a pandemic-era boom to a ~$1B valuation in 2021 and expanded aggressively. As demand normalized the company conducted multiple layoffs, and a March 2024 Series D financing valued it below $100M in a cramdown, stripping its unicorn status.

Source: The Information; Fortune; FTL financials in FTC settlement

Founders

Steven Galanis
co-founder & CEO
Still there — Co-Founder & CEOLinkedIn ↗
Martin Blencowe
co-founder
LinkedIn ↗
Devon Townsend
co-founder & chief product officer
Still there — Co-Founder & Chief Product OfficerLinkedIn ↗