Panna

Devin Tavona built his first product at 20, dropped out of CU Boulder despite studying predictive recommendation technology, and cut his teeth in the travel tech world—first as an iOS developer at Flipboard, then as mobile lead at Everlator (acquired by MapQuest in 2013). But after years in the industry, he saw the same problem everywhere: travel booking was fragmented, painful, and broken for busy people. When Nathan Latka asked him how he'd compete with Expedia and Kayak, Devin's answer was simple: white glove service powered by AI-trained humans, not algorithms alone. "We're basically building this private travel concierge service," he explained. "All the researching and booking of flights, hotels, cars, restaurants that you'd have to do yourself online, we do through this amazing white glove service."

At 8 months old, Panna had already raised $200K in angel funding (convertible notes) to stay alive and experiment. By the time of this interview, the company had just closed a $1.3-1.35M seed round, influenced partly by converting those notes into equity to keep incentive structures clean and avoid K-1 tax headaches for investors. The founding team was lean—about four people visible on the website—but Devin was crystal clear about the company's positioning: think "Costco of travel," not Uber for concierges. Members pay a subscription for access to white-glove service and exclusive rates, meaning Panna's incentives align with customer value, not commission maximization. The AI wasn't meant to replace humans; it was meant to empower them to make bold decisions (like rebooking a customer on a different airline if a flight delayed) that made business sense long-term.

Devin's go-to-market strategy was textbook scarcity play. The landing page (PANA.com) simply said "Boarding soon" with an email opt-in—no messy product details, just exclusivity. This wasn't accident; it was deliberate. "We're going for an exclusive launch strategy of inviting taste makers, inviting kind of key people who we think would really enjoy the service and would talk about it a lot," Devin said. "And kind of playing up that artificial scarcity piece of the launch." The strategy worked. In just 90 days, the company grew from zero to 5,000 beta users, with roughly 90% of that growth driven by referral and word-of-mouth. By the time of the interview, about 2,500 of those users were monetized (paying subscribers), averaging $25-$50 per month—putting Panna in the $40-50K monthly revenue range despite being pre-launch.

The referral engine was undeniably powerful. Devin attributed this partly to brand positioning ("feel more powerful, feel more cool") and partly to product quality—the concierges were genuinely good at what they did. The subscription model, not commissions, gave the team freedom to optimize for customer happiness over short-term monetization. At 23 years old, Devin was also unusually disciplined: he prioritized sleep, studied execution-focused CEOs like Matt Bloomberg, and read behavioral psychology (hooked by Nir Eyal) to understand retention loops. One smart move was converting the angel notes to equity early, which saved the cap table from complexity and investors from tax nightmares.

Panna was in rolling launch mode, planning to scale public availability over the next 2-3 months as word-of-mouth grew and PR hit lifestyle publications. Devin was confident but measured, wanting to ensure the company could handle supply as demand scaled. With $1.5M in total funding, 5,000 beta users, and $40-50K MRR, Panna had momentum. Nathan Latka summed it up: "23-year-old who is crushing it." For founders considering whether to drop out and build, Devin was the proof point—young, focused, and already proving that white-glove service in a commoditized market could work if you had the right team and the right incentives.