2 cofounders whose last company sold to Amazon have raised $5 million to turbocharge a new comic-book startup. Read their pitch deck.

Dstlry teases that it is a “different kind of publisher.”

Steinberger cofounded Comixology before Dstlry. In Dstlry’s deck, the company touted that he is a technical product leader with 15 years of experience, including:

• Multiple comics-reading patents
• Led and defined the experience for comics and manga worldwide for Amazon between 2014 and 2022
• Became a go-to Web3 consultant internally to the Amazon Alexa Investment Fund

The company quoted Forbes contributor Rob Salkowitz, who wrote in March 2022 on the pop culture site ICV2 that “it’s hard to think of many other people who have had as big an impact on the 21st-century comics business as David Steinberger.”

Around 10% to 15% of the intellectual property that Mosher worked on for Comixology Originals, the company’s content arm, has been optioned, according to Dstlry.

Dstlry is structured to “encourage creators to do their best, most commercial work,” the company wrote.

Dstlry told BI it set aside 3% of its shares for its first three years of publishing to award options to creators. It distributes those shares based on how much revenue a creator’s work brings in for the company.

The company also says it offers royalties based on cover price, the same royalty tiers for all parties, and a “human-readable contract” in an understandable order with a summary and signature page at the front featuring what creators told them were the most important details for a contract.

The company excerpted quotes from recent press coverage, including a New York Times piece that described Dstlry’s first comic-book writers as a “murderers’ row of talent.”

So much of comic-book culture is about collecting. Dstlry’s system allows users to collect physical and digital versions of comics, along with the ability to resell digital copies in its marketplace.

In 2023, Dstlry released “The Devil’s Cut,” a project developed by nearly two dozen writers and artists; “Gone” from Jock, Will Dennis, and Emma Price; and “Somna” from Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay.

The company plans to publish around 60 works this year.

Comics-industry outlet The Beat named Dstlry its 2023 publisher of the year.

Dstlry’s investor and advisor team includes Lorenzo di Bonaventura, a former president at Warner Bros.; John Schappert, cofounder of video-game developer Tiburon Entertainment; and tech, gaming, and digital-media investor Mike Vorhaus.

The company then included a business flywheel (a concept commonly used by staffers at Amazon to show how different parts of a business can help others grow).

Dstlyr’s flywheel is built around the company courting top creators to bring original content to its platform. It packages that content in a “premium product” and digital experience, which then drives up fan engagement.

At the end of its presentation, Dstlry offered a closing slide with a prompt to “email for more information.”