Cameo, the company behind the eponymous video-commissioning app, has undergone another round of layoffs, dropping the headcount of the startup to fewer than 50 employees.
The move was described as a finance-related decision in an all-hands company meeting on Tuesday. This round of layoffs was said to ax “at least” 80 people, according to a pair of former employees involved in the layoffs who spoke with The Information. Cameo had around 400 employees before layoffs began in 2022.
A representative for Cameo did not refute the details of the aforementioned report when responding to TheWrap’s request for comment. They provided a statement from the company’s CEO, Steven Galanis.
“Cameo has made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team in order to adjust to the worsening macroeconomic environment,” Galanis said. “We believed we right-sized our business with our last reduction but as the economic conditions continue to slow growth, Cameo will sharpen its focus with a more streamlined team. We remain confident in our mission to build a frictionless marketplace that enables talent to connect with fans and brands through the authentic, personalized experiences that first put Cameo on the map.”
For those not familiar with the Chicago-based company, it’s the maker of the popular Cameo app, wherein celebrities, influencers, and all sorts of noteworthy figures can provide fans with personalized video messages. Cameo is a big enough entity in the video space that it recently struck a deal with SAG-AFTRA so that SAG members’ Cameo for Business activities counted toward their health and pension benefits. (find TheWrap’s strike coverage here).
Though Cameo’s layoffs are an exceptionally severe case of company downsizing, the app maker is far from the only tech industry entity to be shrinking its headcount. A wide assortment of technology companies have been aggressively culling staff throughout 2023, with Meta downsizing by over 20,000 staffers (a move that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was inspired to make following Elon Musk’s drastic shrinking of Twitter’s headcount). Be it Microsoft, Amazon, or even Apple, most big names have seen some kind of trim in 2023.
Even Reddit axed 5% of its workforce, though that’s far from the biggest story that site’s been the focus of this year. Beyond layoffs, Reddit also introduced new API monetization policies to boost its profitability. In the process, it enraged a large portion of its site moderators, leading to subreddit blackouts, name calling, and ongoing protests (subreddits are topic-specific subsections of the Reddit site).
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