Cameo, digital industry for buying celebrity greetings and interactions, has attracted PayPal
PYPL
in its latest round of funding, an addition intended to reinforce its focus on overseas expansion.
The inclusion of PayPal will better link the payment processing company and also the startup as Cameo creates software to efficiently distribute revenue from its platform to international celebrities, some of whom reside in countries not served by competing companies for example Stripe, said Steven Galanis, CEO and co-founder of Cameo. .
\”We believe they'll help us realize our vision in a big way – the vision of building technology that will allow every talent on Earth to possess a personal relationship each and every fan,\” says Galanis.
Cameo raised a Series C round of $100 million, a large amount of cash putting a valuation close to $1 billion on the company, based on estimated data from PitchBook. That brings Cameo's four-year-old total bankroll to almost $170 million, an amount sucked from investors including SoftBank, Google Ventures and United Talent Agency. The new $1 billion valuation represents a significant jump from its previous $300 million valuation.
Gross revenues, the quantity of bookings on Cameo, from abroad take into account more than a quarter of those sales in 2022, compared to 17% last year. Cameo want to see this figure increase further to over 50% in the next few years. To date, it has mainly attracted interest from English-speaking countries, with more recent development in Germany, France and Italy, says Galanis.
The startup is better known as a spot to hire celebrities to produce virtual greetings, like birthday wishes. These vary from $5 to over $1,000 for Cameo's most famous faces, like Richard Dreyfuss, Ice T, and Tony Hawk, who had been also a Series C investor. Cameo takes 25% of gross bookings, adequate for an estimated $25 million in net revenue this past year. It recently expanded its offerings to include the opportunity to book a one-on-one conversation having a celebrity and allow stars to produce a subscription-based fan club. The startup further wishes to scale a market these days it is testing where small , medium-sized businesses hire celebrities for bespoke content.
To help celebrities manage what's happening, Cameo recently introduced a central dashboard, Wallet. There, they'll be able to review individual transactions, a fan's purchase history, read the breakdowns of Cameo products that generate their revenue, and transfer revenue to bank accounts more quickly.
\”As people make more money on cameo, we need to start empowering talent with tools to operate their business as efficiently as you possibly can,\” Galanis says.
