Grad Profiles highlight the personal and professional stories of Founder Institute Graduates from across the globe.
This profile on Memetales, a Graduate of the Seattle Founder Institute, was written by Emma Tzeng. Emma blogs at http://emmatzeng.wordpress.com, and you can also follow her on Twitter at @emmatzeng.
Imagine this: You're a full-time working mother of two young children, Maddy and Ted. It's 5 P.M., you've just rushed through work, picked up the kids, and are now scrambling to prepare dinner. Ted scatters his toys across the kitchen floor and Maddy--bless her soul--begins demanding in a shrill voice, "Mommy, read me the story!"
You look down at Maddy, holding her favorite storybook and peering back at you with longing eyes, and wish, not for the first time in your life, that you could be in two places at once.
Enter Memetales, a mobile marketplace for interactive children's stories. Founded in July 2011 by Maya Bisineer, a developer, technology architect, consultant, and full-time working mother, Memetales brings children's stories to life through audio readings, vivid illustrations, and interactive activities.
Propelled by her demanding schedule as a career woman and mother, Bisneer first thought up the idea for Memetales in 2008 because she wanted to write and share stories with her children, and also create opportunities for illustrators like her sister to publish their work.
“Stories are such a powerful way of connecting and communicating a message,” Bisneer writes on her personal blog ThinkMaya. “And who better to write stories than the people who are inspired by life and children?”
Since then, Bisneer has grown her company to a team of six, raised funding from big names such as Dave McClure of 500 Startups, pitched at VentureBeat’s DEMO Fall 2011 event, and uprooted her business from her home office in Seattle to Silicon Valley.
As Memetales’ vision spreads, its reach expands with it: to date, over 25,000 children have used the app to read stories more than 200,000 times.
With Memetales' voice over option, children can follow readings on their own. Such self-directed, interactive capabilities sets Memetales apart from traditional storybooks and presents solutions to busy parents seeking enriching, hands-on activities for their children.
Moreover, children love the app: the average session time on Memetales is 29 minutes.
Parents and children can preview and purchase books through the Memetales marketplace, which offers an array of titles from self-published authors and small- to medium-sized publishers. With the Memetales publishing platform, parents and children can also publish their own books with relative ease. In this way, Memetales creates a community of empowerment and collaboration among children, parents, and publishers. When publishers sell their books and games, Memetales takes a small cut of the profit, and also generates revenue when publishers pay for premium services.
According to the Book Industry Association, the total reading market racks up an estimated $1.2 billion in retail sales. Of this number, the projected available market for learn-to-read toys totals $250 million.
Memetales currently operates on iOS 3.2 or above, and is compatible with both the iPhone and the iPad. The app is free to download, and comes with 20 free books upon registration. Users pay to unlock individual books thereafter, and can also purchase premium packs for favorite books, which include games and activities.
As technology continues to rear towards the digital space, Memetales hopes to pave the way for independent publishers, young children, and tech-savvy parents to interact in a space that fosters learning, creativity, and growth.
As Bisneer writes on her personal blog, “Good stories and books will go away if we do not find ways to reinvent them in the most interesting, valuable and scalable ways.”
For more information on Memetales:
