Giving VoyceMe to a community of creators

Dylan Telano ’23, a business administration and management major from Commack, Long Island, has turned his passions for storytelling and community into a successful and rapidly growing online creator platform.  
 
The “social creative ecosystem” he has established in VoyceMe is the first of its kind for manga and webtoons – types of anime from Japan and South Korea, respectively – for an English-language audience.

“VoyceMe is like the YouTube for digital comics,” Telano explains. “As a whole, we're helping creators build and foster an audience to take their story to the next level."

His creative, entrepreneurial journey at Skidmore began in his first year at the College, when he brought the seed of his idea to the Freirich Entrepreneurship Competition. He took home the $1,000 fourth-place prize that debut year, and then became the first sophomore to win the $20,000 first-place prize the following year.

He has since raised about $5 million from investors – including Marvel, Crunchy Roll, Rotten Tomatoes, CNN, CBSN, and some large venture capital firms – and now has approximately 80 individuals on the payroll.

As with any great success story, Telano has had to work hard, take risks, fail, and learn from his mistakes. He credits much of his success to his Skidmore alumni mentorships, supportive business professors, and inspiring peers. All are attributes of a College that has prioritized entrepreneurship through innovative programs that include the Entrepreneurial Artist Initiative and the Skidmore-Saratoga Consulting Partnership, in addition to the Freirich competition. A $10 million Sands Family Foundation Initiative for Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship at Skidmore only deepens Skidmore’s commitment. 

Telano’s first iteration of VoyceMe was a Western literature-based platform for blogs, e-books, and poems. His initial “bootstrapped” capital came from the $1,000 he won during his first year of the Freirich competition, his earnings as a professional e-sports player, his income from working at a marketing firm, his bar mitzvah money, and everything he had left from his college savings.

He identified a gap in the creative industry and set out to fill it. 

“Videos have YouTube. Video gamers have Twitch. People who dance and sing have TikTok. Artists have Pinterest, Instagram. There’s always a way for the creative to interact with their audience. The writing industry is the only creative industry where that is not true,” he observes. “So that’s where this social element comes in. On VoyceMe, when you post a chapter, you can live interact with all the other readers. As a reader, you could interact with the author, with the artist."

He met one of his biggest advisors, mentors, and now investor, Matt Finick ’92, an early executive of Marvel Entertainment and Roblox, through Skidmore. “The amount of information, networking, and hours he has put into the business is unbelievable,” Telano says.

Finick taught Telano how to fundraise and to look at his venture from multiple angles.

“He said, ‘This is what I would say as an investor to evaluate your company.’ Then he gave the perspective of, ‘as a Skidmore alum, a friend of yours, and a father, I’m going to tell you what is actually beneficial toward you as a college student.’”

In his first year of the Freirich Entrepreneurship Competition, Telano was paired with mentor Gregg Smith ’92, founder of culture-tech investment firm Evolution VC Partners. Smith gave Telano his first insights into the mentality and speed of the business environment. “I then spent every night working from those calls, doing research, watching YouTube videos, and learning from connections,” he recalls.

In Telano’s sophomore year, attorney Gregory Rutchik ’87 became his alumni mentor for the competition. “We were assigning content to our platform, and NDAs, and I had no idea how to do any of it. So he was giving me templates, he was walking me through that, and it was perfect how that mentorship helped continue growing the platform.”

The first official launch of the platform took place early in Telano’s sophomore year. While he saw significant traction with a novel titled “God Game,” in e-book format, he was noticing that many users enjoyed the social elements but weren’t connecting with the Western-based content.

About two months into his sophomore year, he decided to change course.

“I went back to my roots,” Telano recalls. “I grew up on this stuff called manga and anime and webtoons. I’m a fan of the space and I know what’s a good story. Then thousands of users started coming in overnight. The second we made that pivot from a failing platform, we started doubling down in content. People loved it. I learned a lot through that.”

In his junior year, fundraising really got underway. “That is when it started becoming a real business,” Telano says. 

As he handled everything from content to business development, sales, and fundraising, Telano estimates he was easily working 120 hours a week through his junior year. “It’s gotten a little bit easier now that I have employees and can really departmentalize, but it’s still really hard,” he observes. 

Having business professors who truly understand and provide support – including Colleen Burke, executive in residence and director of the Skidmore-Saratoga Consulting Partnership, and Teaching Professor Catherine Hill – has made all the difference, Telano says, especially when balancing meetings with classes or attending class via Zoom while on a train to meet a New York City investor. 

He has also appreciated the guest speakers and comprehensive case scenarios in Burke’s Business Strategy class, and working with other entrepreneurs in Hill’s Entrepreneurship and Small Business class.

“Just meeting all the students is encouraging. Everyone’s hustling around me. It’s weird to say you find that in an upstate New York liberal arts college, but you do. There are all these students who have these really cool back-stories and goals and aspirations, and I’m a part of that and that’s inspiring me. And I think just from my interactions with other people, it helps inspire them.”

Telano has found time to pay it forward outside of Skidmore, particularly through VoyceMe’s partnership with Tech Valley High School in Rennselaer, New York. He has spoken to the students about entrepreneurial lessons he has learned and about real problems that VoyceMe has faced, allowing the students the opportunity to pitch solutions as if they were consultants.

“I like to give back,” Telano says. “I have this open-door policy where anyone can just message me and be like, ‘Here’s my story. Here’s my idea. What do you think? And I’ll carve out some time somewhere and give them my honest input on it.”

So many of his experiences through VoyceMe have been surreal, he reflects, such as working with authors, animators, and the people behind his favorite companies, including Marvel; having a call with the founder and VP of Netflix and pitching to the streaming service; and speaking on two panels at LA Comic Con in late fall of 2022.

“My inner nerd is screaming, but I have to keep calm, kind of like, ‘Yeah, I’ll definitely take this. Thank you for the opportunity,” Telano says with a laugh.

In reflecting on the entirety of his Skidmore experience, he acknowledges the impact that luck and environment have on a burgeoning business.

“My Skidmore experience grounded me in this mentality of I really want to make a business from start to end. I’m willing to put in that work. I’m willing to do what it takes. I love it, I enjoy it. I can see this being a career."

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Explore more in the spring 2023 issue of Scope magazine.