Elderly Italian grandmother in a cream apron rolling pasta dough at a rustic wooden table, warm golden light, copper pots in the background

Founded in Bologna · 2024

Preserve wisdom, one recipe at a time.

Company Nonna S.r.l.
Sector Cultural tech · Food heritage
Reach EU + US · 14 countries

01 · Our Story

A recipe that almost died.

Vintage black and white photograph of an Italian grandmother in a sunlit kitchen
Nonna Carla, 1938 – 2022. The woman whose tortellini started all this.

In December 2022, our co-founder Maria Conti lost her grandmother. Two months later, her family tried to recreate Nonna Carla’s Christmas tortellini. It wasn’t the same. The recipe had never been written down. The hands that made it were gone. The taste, with them.

Maria discovered she wasn’t alone. In Italy alone, one grandparent passes away every 90 seconds — and, with them, roughly 3 000 unrecorded family recipes each day. Worldwide, UNESCO flags intangible culinary heritage as critically endangered.

So Maria teamed up with Luca Ferretti (former food-tech engineer, Barilla Group) and Sofia Amaru (documentary filmmaker, Vice) to build what they wished they’d had: a dignified, simple, cinematic way to capture a grandparent cooking, forever.

— Nonna was born on a kitchen table in Bologna, on 17 February 2024.

  1. The tortellini that could not be rebuilt.

  2. First 12 beta families record recipes in Emilia-Romagna.

  3. Nonna S.r.l. incorporated in Bologna.

  4. €1.8M seed round led by United Ventures.

  5. Launch in 14 countries. 37 000 recipes preserved.

  6. You are here.

02 · Mission

We turn every grandparent into a living cookbook.

Simply, beautifully, and before it’s too late.

03 · Vision

A world where no family recipe dies with its creator.

By 2035: one million recipes rescued, in fifty languages, across four generations.

04 · How it works

Three steps. Zero complications.

Grandparents don’t need another app. They need to be seen. So we designed Nonna around the most natural act there is: cooking for someone you love.

A young woman films her grandmother shaping tortellini on a wooden table
01

Record

A family member presses one button. Our guided overlay captures every step of the recipe in cinema-grade video, with automatic multilingual transcription. No tripods, no jargon, no editing.

Open recipe notebook, flour, rolling pin and antique kitchen tools arranged on an oak table
02

Preserve

Each recipe becomes a permanent entry in your private Living Cookbook — video, handwritten card, voice note, ingredient list. Passed down as an heirloom, not a file.

Artisan kit box with glass jars of ingredients, linen twine and a handwritten recipe card
03

Taste

One click ships the artisan ingredient kit to relatives anywhere in the world. Nonna’s recipe, in Nonna’s exact proportions, rebuilt in your kitchen on a Sunday. That’s where we make our revenue.

05 · By the numbers

We measure progress in recipes rescued.

0 Recipes preserved to date
0 Countries served
0 Regional cuisines mapped
0% Family satisfaction (NPS 78)

Independently audited by Deloitte Italy, Q4 2025. Revenue: €4.2M ARR · Gross margin: 62% · Burn rate: zero since Q3 2025.

06 · Our team

Three founders. One grandmother.

Portrait of Maria Conti, CEO and co-founder

Maria Conti

Co-founder · CEO

Granddaughter of Nonna Carla. Former brand strategist at Slow Food. Bocconi MSc. Builds the why.

Portrait of Luca Ferretti, CTO and co-founder

Luca Ferretti

Co-founder · CTO

Ex Food-tech engineer, Barilla Group. Polimi MSc, MIT Sloan Fellow 2021. Builds the how.

Portrait of Sofia Amaru, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder

Sofia Amaru

Co-founder · Chief Creative Officer

Documentary filmmaker (Vice, Netflix). IULM Milano. Builds the what.

“We are not a tech company that cooks. We are a memory company that happens to ship ingredients.” Maria Conti, Founders Magazine, April 2025
Young and elderly hands meeting, holding wheat grains

07 · Why now

The last generation that learned to cook without a screen is leaving.

In Europe, 34% of under-25s cannot name three recipes their grandparents cooked. In the US, that number is 51%. Every year we wait, an entire generation of oral tradition walks quietly off the stage.

We built Nonna because technology finally caught up with tenderness — and because no app, museum or cookbook has ever preserved a recipe the way a grandchild with a camera can.

08 · Trust

Slow Food UNESCO Heritage Financial Times Monocle United Ventures La Repubblica Kinfolk Gambero Rosso
“The most quietly radical Italian startup of the decade.” — Financial Times, 12 Nov 2025

Some recipes cannot wait.

Start preserving your family’s table today. The first recipe is on us.

Join the table

09 · Classroom debrief

How this profile follows the rules.

Below — a guided tour of every rule from the course slides and where we applied it. Use this as a checklist when you build your own company profile.

Company Profile · Content

Must-have information

  • Company name → Nonna S.r.l. (hero + nav)
  • Physical address → Bologna, Italy (story + footer)
  • Established date → 17 February 2024 (timeline)
  • Contact info → CTA + footer
  • Sector → Cultural tech · Food heritage (hero meta)
Mission vs Vision

Clear separation, K.I.S.S. applied

Mission (what we do, how, why): “turn every grandparent into a living cookbook.” — one sentence, specific, plausible, inspirational.

Vision (where we want the world to be): “a world where no family recipe dies with its creator.” — one sentence, ambitious, unique to us.

Strong action words

Verbs that work

We deliberately avoided weak verbs (make, do, help). We used:

PreserveTurnRecordRescue EmpowerShipRebuildCapture
Impressive nouns

Identity positioning

We never call Nonna “a service” or “a platform.” We use identity nouns: a memory company, the Living Cookbook, a heirloom. These claim a category of one.

Comparatives & superlatives

Differentiation, with dignity

“The most quietly radical Italian startup of the decade.” (press)

“No app, museum or cookbook has ever preserved a recipe the way a grandchild with a camera can.” (Why Now)

Storytelling

Begin with a person, not a product

The profile opens with Nonna Carla’s death and a tortellini that could not be rebuilt — a concrete, human origin story. Only after the story do we talk about the company. This is the Starbucks and Tesla template.

Stats & facts

Concrete, specific, verifiable

  • 37 412 recipes preserved · 14 countries · 612 cuisines
  • €4.2M ARR · 62% gross margin · NPS 78
  • “One grandparent every 90 seconds” · “34% of under-25s”

Rule: the audience doesn’t care what you sell until they believe in your brand — and numbers make brands believable.

The 7 C’s of Communication

Applied, one by one

  1. Clear — one idea per section, one sentence per idea.
  2. Correct — British-American hybrid avoided; native editing.
  3. Complete — Story / Mission / Vision / How / Team / Numbers / Trust / CTA.
  4. Concrete — tortellini, not “pasta products.” Bologna, not “Europe.”
  5. Concise — no paragraph longer than four lines.
  6. Consideration — warm tone for a warm audience (families).
  7. Courteous — we never mock competitors or customers.
Company culture vibe

Warm, authoritative, human

Chosen culture adjectives: Empathy, Personalization, Sustainability, Transparency. Tone: mature and reassuring, not funky or tech-bro. Palette and typography follow: terracotta + cream, editorial serif, no gradients, no emojis.

Public speaking reminders

For the live presentation

  • 55% body, 38% voice, 7% words — deliver the emotion first.
  • Repeat the key idea 3 times: “preserve wisdom, one recipe at a time.”
  • Breathe on the dots. Pause after every mission/vision line.
  • K.I.S.S. — never read a bullet. Speak to people, not at slides.
  • Three key ideas max: story, mission, how. Everything else is backup.