Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Panna Cooking App Gets Traction, Funding

Type “cooking” into the search field in Apple’s App Store, and you’ll get more than 3,700 results.

But that didn’t stop David Ellner from launching Panna, a “digital cooking magazine” on the platform last year.

Now Ellner, a former music executive, has convinced investors that he’s on to something: He has raised a $1.35 million round, led by Anthem Ventures. Other investors include Lerer Ventures, Crosslink Ventures, Howard Schultz’s Maveron and Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital.

Panna’s pitch is simple: A pure-play cooking publication, combining high-gloss photos and high-end videos, featuring lots of famous chefs, like Rick Bayless and Jonathan Waxman. New apps come out every couple months, and cost $5 apiece; a year’s subscription costs $15.

So far, Ellner has produced four issues, and won’t release sales or download numbers. But apparently they are good enough to round up an A round. Earlier this year, he added an iPhone version to compliment his original iPad launch; an Android edition is in the works.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik