This startup has backing from Sequoia, Will Smith, Lionel Richie
Protégé is like Cameo meets 'American Idol' or 'Shark Tank,' letting you pitch your talent and ideas to celebrities, including Scooter Braun and Jason Alexander.
Technology, airlines, cannabis
Billy Cole, Vanity Portrait Studio
Protégé co-founders Jackson Jhin (left) and Mike Cruz.
Jackson Jhin once wanted to be a professional musician.
He could never catch the break he needed to launch a music career, but Jhin, formerly chief strategy officer of Cameo, thinks he can help others get their shots. He created Protégé, an online site that allows people to get their talent or idea in front of accomplished professionals for feedback. It’s sort of like Cameo meets "American Idol" or "Shark Tank."
Jhin, 27, has raised $8.5 million for Protégé from high-profile backers, led by Silicon Valley investor Sequoia Capital, as well as such celebrities as Will Smith, DJ Khaled, Lionel Richie and Jason Alexander. Other investors include TQ Ventures and entrepreneurs like Cameo co-founder Steven Galanis, Grubhub co-founder Matt Maloney, DoorDash co-founder Tony Xu and M1 Finance founder Brian Barnes.
It’s a rare Chicago startup investment for Sequoia, which was introduced to Jhin by his former boss, Galanis, who also is an early-stage scout investor for the firm, though it didn't invest in Cameo.
Protégé's business model is similar to Cameo's, in which people pay to get a shoutout from a celebrity. People will pay $10 to a couple hundred dollars to submit a video lasting up to 60 seconds to a pro on Protégé, such as music talent manager Scooter Braun or actor Jason Alexander, who will provide feedback on them. Protégé will get a 25% cut of the fee.
"It's the concept of talent being evenly distributed but opportunity isn’t," says Jess Lee, the Sequoia partner who led the deal. "A lot of people on the talent side do want to pay it forward. They just don’t have an efficient way to do it. There are all these amazing people who are trying to break in, but it’s still really hard to make it. (Protégé) found a way to connect talent to up-and-comers."
Jhin points to his own experience as a musician, growing up in Houston. “No matter how much I wanted it, I had zero connections,” he says. “It’s not something you can do by just getting on the Internet. It takes warm intros. It’s a matter of getting in front of the right people.”
He was fresh out of the University of Notre Dame in 2017, working as an analyst at venture-capital firm Chicago Ventures, which is housed at tech incubator 1871. Elevators outside the 1871 offices stop working in the early evening, and Jhin stumbled into Cameo, looking for help. He eventually convinced Chicago Ventures to become the first fund to back Cameo, which later landed money from Kleiner Perkins and has since been valued at $1 billion.
Jhin eventually went to work for Cameo, becoming its first chief financial officer and later chief strategy officer. Galanis became a mentor and early backer of Protégé. Jhin left Cameo in April to work full time on the startup with co-founder Mike Cruz, former chief technology officer of Trunk Club.
Protégé now has 14 employees. Since the site launched in October, Jhin says 30,000 people created an account, and 3,000 have submitted a video.
