Dylan Telano, a senior at Skidmore College, has raised $2.5 million to continue developing a platform for Japanese comics that he started in high school.
The seed round of funding for VoyceMe was led by Torch Capital, with contributions by M13 Ventures, River Park Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and Red Sea Ventures.
That brings the startup’s total to about $4 million raised.
Telano, 21, says the latest round will allow him to build out the team – including hiring a CTO – as well as implement monetization models. There are currently eight employees and about 70 contractors.
“I'm slowly merging into classic CEO, where I'm not doing everything. I'm now focusing more on company vision, helping out where areas need help,” Telano said. “I have a lot of experience in the space now. I know what works. I have the data to even back it up as well.”
VoyceMe is an online platform and app where authors can share manga – Japanese-style comics – and webtoons, digital comics that originated in South Korea.
It’s an industry Telano says has exploded globally over the last few years.
Any creator can post work, but VoyceMe partners with certain authors to help produce work, similar to platforms like YouTube and Netflix. Creators can currently generate revenue through ads and sponsors, and readers can give money to their favorite creators. Telano said VoyceMe is also evolving how comics are read by adding sound, 3-D animation and live community engagement.
Telano said the platform has broken 1 million unique monthly users and has published more than 10,000 chapters. The average user engagement time per session is more than 20 minutes, and he hasn’t even added any of the planned retention features yet, he said.
“Our app has been growing at like 30-50% month-over-month,” Telano said.
In the first phase of monetization, he plans to “gamify” the app, meaning users can earn coins by completing certain tasks like reading a chapter or watching an ad.
“All the competitors use it in some way or form, so we're going to stick with that because it works.”
That will happen in the next three months, with a goal of generating $500,000 to $1 million next year, he said.
“Then from there, looking to basically jump that up to multiple millions in revenue,” Telano said. “Every one of our stories, a new chapter comes out per week, so that every single week, technically, we get more and more profitable because that content is really the key of monetization.”
Over the next year and a half, the plan is to focus on licensing to other platforms and companies to make products like movies, music, games, books and anything else.
Telano has learned from industry mentors that only about 50% of revenue for this type of business comes from original content. The other half comes from licensing.
“The core of it is you make good content, you can make money," Telano said. "So that's the goal that we're trying to follow – keep making sure our creative team is super strong.”
One of the platform’s original series has already been licensed for development into a card game. And the company is working on a hardcover book with plans for two others soon after.
Telano has primarily built the platform from his college dorm room, but he has upgraded this year to an off-campus apartment.
He is taking some entrepreneurship and business classes this year, and he says those teachers have been particularly supportive and flexible as he builds his company. To earn some credit for the work he’s been doing, he is completing an academic internship with his own company this year.
