Investors are always looking for founders who challenge the status quo in creative ways. For me, creativity is a mix of novelty and utility. Novel ideas often begin with a game-like element that can be perceived as childlike or amusing, but they often end up tapping into popular culture in ways that resonate with consumers.
Lightspeed recently led the Series A funding of Cameo, a marketplace where consumers send personalized video messages from celebrities and influencers to their friends.
Since launching last March, the platform has already attracted over 5,500 influencers, including Caitlin Jenner (Kardashians), Terrell Owens (NFL), Misha Barton (ex O.C. actress), and reality TV stars such as The Real Housewives.
Many companies have tried and failed to build this kind of business in the past. Cameo is succeeding because it keeps the novelty factor first and foremost. Instead of going for big names from the start, the company made the wise decision to start with lesser known influencers to prove the viability of the concept. Now it has begun to get the attention of A-list celebrities.
A key advantage to Cameo’s model is that it can rely on these influencers to market the product for them by sharing the videos to their own social platforms. And because users love receiving these videos, they post them on social media as well, spreading the word to friends and family. Cameo has also been growing thanks to the tremendous earned media coverage it has received from outlets such as the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Forbes, Time, Fox, and the BBC.
When I first used Cameo and bought one of my colleagues a happy birthday message from his favorite NFL player, it was far more amusing and memorable than if I had simply sang him “Happy Birthday”. When I used Cameo to ask my old high school crush, English rugby star James Haskell, to send a good luck message to a friend, it almost felt like ventriloquism.
The excitement these experiences using Cameo created for me and my colleague and friend was worth far more than the $50 it cost me. It’s no wonder nearly 100,000 Cameos have been completed.
Cameo got me thinking about other famous startups that began with a similar game-like approach…
In his early Harvard days, Mark Zuckerberg started a game where students could play a version of “hot or not” with people that they knew. Ranking the attractiveness of classmates in a small social circle was a clever precursor to profiling students and staff in “The Facebook.” Whether you believe this was childlike or just childish, it proved highly effective at attracting eyeballs and boosting engagement.
Slack
Slack’s founder, Stewart Butterfield, originally set out to build a massively multiplayer game. After selling Flickr to Yahoo, he started Slack as a gaming company. The game, called Glitch, never went anywhere. But the internal chat tool Butterfield’s team created so his designers could collaborate has changed how businesses communicate. This novel approach to messaging soon became popular with the masses.
Snap
Evan Spiegel started Snap as a way for users to send cheeky pictures to one another. There was always an amusing element to it, from the disappearing photos and messages, to the augmented reality filters users could apply to their photos. Face swapping with friends gave Snap a game-like element, and these novel features drove retention at a rate we had never seen before.
At Lightspeed we often focus on companies that leverage inherent consumer behaviors and enhance them with technology. For years, people have been sharing pictures of themselves and later wishing they could make them disappear — then Snap came along.
Cameo is yet another strong example of this. People have been trying to feel a closer connection to their favorite celebrities and sports heroes since the age of the gladiators. We now live in a time where influencers help dictate our buying habits and determine what’s cool in society. As a competitive sprinter, I would have felt more motivated having Usain Bolt wish me good luck before a 100-meter race than if my husband had. (Sorry dear.)
Today, Cameo is used for birthday shout-outs, anniversary notes, sports taunting, motivational speeches, and get well messages. Tomorrow, we will see where they go as the world is their oyster. This is just the beginning of how Cameo and its CEO Steven Galanis are disrupting the influencer ecosystem.
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