Panna, A Video-Based Cooking ?Magazine? For iOS, Raises $1.35 Million

Panna, a video cooking magazine iOS application which connects users to celebrity chefs, has raised $1.35 million in a round of funding led by Anthem Ventures. Others participating include Lerer Ventures, Crosslink Ventures, Maveron, Shari Redstone’s Advancit Capital, RSL Venture Partners, Launchpad LA, David Tisch’s BoxGroup, and angels?Rick J. Caruso, Ken Siskind, Jay Livingston, Dan Rose, Aaron Schiff and David Levy. Unlike many cooking apps out there on the App Store today, Panna’s creator, David Ellner, is not your typical tech entrepreneur, but rather comes from the entertainment industry, where he spent 25 years, including time spent serving as President of Digital and Business Development for 19 Entertainment, the producer of TV series like American Idol. With this background, he comes at the (yes, very crowded) cooking and recipe space thinking more about things like how to use high-def videos and quality production values to connect celeb chefs and at-home cooks similar to the way that television does today, rather than trying to break new ground through technological leaps. If anything, Panna’s mere existence is demonstrative of the fact that there’s interest in bringing TV-like content to our mobile devices, and if the Hollywood studios won’t do it for us, then someone else will. And on a related note, Panna is a Kickstarter success story – it got its start on the crowdfunding site where hundreds of home cooks donated to get it off the ground. The entertainment industry is experimenting more and more with this method of launching their projects these days, most recently with the funding of Zach Braff’s indie film “Wish I Was Here,” and “Veronica Mars” creator’s Rob Thomas’ desire to turn the show into a feature film. The app itself is more than a recipe finder, and is styled as a “magazine,” released bi-monthly, each digital copy containing 13 seasonal video recipes from master chefs who demonstrate their cooking techniques, similar to the way they would on television. Recipe demos can be paused, fast-forwarded through, rewound, or downloaded for offline access. Written versions are also available to help users prepare for their shopping trips. To date, Panna has worked with celebrity chefs like Jonathan Waxman (Barbuto); Rick Bayless (Frontera Grill and Top Chef Masters Winner); Sean Brock (Husk, McCrady?s); Melissa Clark (NY Times food writer and recipe developer); Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirscheimer (Canal House Cooking); Anita Lo (Annisa and Top Chef Masters); Seamus Mullen

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