Customers are notoriously fickle when it comes to sophisticated kitchen devices. On the one hand, there’s undoubtedly a market for items that are deemed useful and priced appropriately. Consider, for example, the Anova Precision Cooker[1], a $145 WiFi- and Bluetooth-enabled device that managed to get its parent company sold to the appliance giant Electrolux in February for $250 million[2].
On the other, make your device too complicated and expensive, and you get mocked[3]. Yes, Juicero[4], we’re talking to you.
Brava[5], a stealth-mode IoT company with plans to create a suite of domestic hardware and software products, would seem to face the same risk. But investors clearly like what it’s cooking up. Indeed, the company — which last year raised $12 million[6] in Series A funding led by the venture firm True Ventures [7]— just raised an undisclosed amount of additional funding that more than doubles that amount.
TPG Growth[8] led the round. Additional investors in the financing include The Rise Fund (which is TPG’s social impact fund[9]), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Next Coast Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, DGNL Ventures, and earlier investors. Some of these include Chris Anderson, who runs the TED conference; Rob Reid, founder of the Rhapsody music service; and Cowboy Ventures’s founder Aileen Lee.
Brava, which now employs 46 people in Redwood City, Ca., is headed by CEO John Pleasants, who has led a number of digital media companies over the last couple of decades, including as co-president of Disney Interactive Media Group, COO of Electronic Arts, CEO of Ticketmaster, and most recently as an EVP at Samsung.
Pleasants also spent a year as the CEO of Playdom, a social gaming company that was acquired for $563...
Read more from our friends at TechCrunch