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Live Like You’re Dying
San Diego Resident and Oceanhouse Media CEO Michel Kripalani Talks About Love, Life and Purpose By Jeanne Rawdin
Michel Kripalani is President of Oceanhouse Media, Inc., a leading publisher of more than 650 mobile and desktop apps based in Encinitas. He’s built his entrepreneurial empire by sticking to the company’s mantra of “Creativity with a Purpose” and is a strong advocate for developing apps that uplift, educate and inspire. Oceanhouse Media, or OM, was founded in January 2009, less than a year after Google launched the App store. Kripalani became one of the pioneers of interactive apps back in the “Gold Rush” days, as Michel calls it. Being a veteran of the video gaming industry didn’t hurt either. Before that, Kripalani gained acclaim as a founder and the CEO of Presto Studios, creator of “The Journeyman Project” series and “Myst III: Exile” games that are still on the market. Today, the company has licensing agreements with Dr. Seuss Enterprises, HarperCollins, Random House Children’s Books, Hay House Publishers, Zondervan (a division of HarperCollins), Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing Company, Mercer Mayer, Soundprints, Andersen Press, Chronicle Books and others. In many cases, the company works directly with authors to bring their beloved books to the app market, always staying true to the original content and intent. Oceanhouse Media has created apps for all 44 of Ted Geisel’s Dr. Suess books as an interactive, educational experience. The Dr. Seuss apps have received critical acclaim and won numerous awards from various organizations, such as Parents’ Choice Awards and Children’s Technology Review. Twelve of the company’s children’s apps have reached the number-one spot on the App Store in the Top Paid Books category. In addition, OM has a diverse variety of other apps including games, music, photography, health and fitness, reference, productivity and finance. Google has selected the company as one of its Top Developers, a designation granted to only 150 groups worldwide. Michel is married to his wife, Kar-
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en, and they have two daughters, Tia who is 12 and Talia who is 10. Karen operates another imprint with the company called Beauty Everywhere, a digital publisher and community that creates inspirational products to help people live better lives. Umbrella Media caught up with Michel Kripalani recently to find out more about this fascinating local entrepreneur and how he approaches his business and his life. Let’s go back to 2009 when you created your very first app called Bowls. How did that idea come about? We were looking do something that would take advantage of IPhone technology, including the touch screen. We wanted to develop something that would do more than just tap or swipe, so we came up with the idea of swirling, which led us to the idea of Tibetan bowls. As a user, you swirl your finger around the edge of the bowls to create a sound, along with cymbals and other Eastern musical instruments. My wife and I are very much of Eastern religion and meditation,
so we already had the bowls. At the time, it was incredibly novel and got featured by Apple and rose to the top of the charts. That app is still available on the App store today and has been updated. What’s funny about it is that I was concerned we had already missed the boat. There were already 10,000 apps on the App store, which had been open for seven months, and I was thinking wow, that’s a lot of competition. Little did I know just how crazy and huge this thing would blow up. How did you come to secure the licenses to create apps for all 44 of Ted Geisel’s Dr. Suess books? Before Oceanhouse, I ran Presto Studios, a video game development company here in San Diego. Way back when, UCSD was the first university in California to sign on to Google’s big digitization program where Google was looking to digitize all of their books. They asked me as the CEO of Presto Studios to be on the advisory board for the libraries to help them understand digital technology because I had a
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