Last week, things finally seemed to be stabilizing for employees of Cameo—an online marketplace where people can pay supporting cast members of “Seinfeld” and other celebrities to record personalized video messages.
After two rounds of layoffs in 2022 that had gutted the size of its staff, Cameo had flown dozens of employees to its Chicago office from around the U.S. and the world, from Mexico to Malta, for an annual hackathon. The employees feasted on lunch from Chipotle and dinner from a local Chinese joint as they also worked on planning for the second half of the year. By this week, though, many of them were out of a job after a third round of layoffs shrank the startup’s headcount to under 50 workers—roughly a tenth of the number Cameo employed just over a year ago.
Some investors in Cameo, meanwhile, are hoping the company finds a buyer, even though they don’t believe it will fetch anything like the $1 billion valuation SoftBank’s Vision Fund and other investors awarded it in 2021. Cameo investors who spoke to The Information estimated the company could be worth as little as $50 million in a sale. Over a year ago, SoftBank marked down its valuation of Cameo to $100 million, a person familiar with the matter said.
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