An investor group including several Austin founders have joined together to buy Nautilus, a literary science magazine founded in 2013.
The New York-based magazine has 10,000 paying subscribers and has an online reach of more than 10 million.
Daily Dot co-founder and CEO Nicholas White is leading the investment group that is acquiring Nautilus. He will assume the same title at Nautilus.
“Nautilus is the best and brightest science brand I know,” White said in a news release. “It’s also a love letter to the intersection of science, art, and culture. It will be an honor and privilege to help steward our team and mission. The editorial operation at Nautilus is world-class and will remain so. Our proposed plan will put the right growth team in place, which will allow us to deliver Nautilus to the wide audience it so clearly deserves.”
Other Austin-based investors include Ben Lamm, CEO of Hypergiant, and Josh Jones Dilworth, founder of JDI.
Other investors include Larry Summers, 71st Secretary of the Treasury, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus, Harvard University and Alexander Falk, co-founder and CEO Altova and prominent angel investor. And Elisa New, Director of Poetry in America and the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University, Drew Hamlin, software designer and Fraser Howie, author.
John Steele will remain as Nautilus’ Publisher and Editorial Director. Kevin Berger will take the helm as Editor-in-Chief and Michael Segal will be Editor-at-Large.
Notable contributors to Nautilus have included: Scott Aaronson, Amanda Gefter, Martin Rees, Lisa Randall, Robert Sapolsky, Hope Jahren, Nicholas Carr, Sylvia Earl, Carl Zimmer, B.J. Novak, Alan Lightman, and Cormac McCarthy.
“The proposed deal gives Nautilus the resources it needs to continue to support the same kind of vibrant, original writing and reporting that has differentiated it from the very beginning,” Steele said in a news release. “Like our staff, contributors, partners and advisors, our new ownership group will be in it for the long haul, and for all the right reasons. Together we will work even harder to expand the public’s knowledge and understanding of fundamental questions of scientific inquiry, as well as their connection to human culture.”
“Science needs all of the love it can get. It deserves everything we have to give,” Jones-Dilworth said in a news release. “We want everyone to understand the fundamental scientific questions of our day, and appreciate how advances both large and small positively impact daily life. All of us in the proposed ownership group share this drive. Nautilus is essential today. If you’re not already a subscriber, you really need to be.”
Nautilus is currently a project of NautilusThink, a New York not-for-profit corporation, which will continue to run programs to advance interest in the sciences following the proposed acquisition.