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"I'm a huge fruit snacks person. I don't really do much candy anymore, but I love fruit snacks." Jonathan Bateman, secure-software developer and founder of deepfake detection platform Real Recognizes Real AI, on the one childhood food obsession he never outgrew.

In this episode of Founders Fridge, host Heidi Knoblauch talks with Jonathan about building technology that verifies real humans using something AI can't fake: shared memories. They discuss how a Star Trek storyline about changelings inspired his approach to stopping fraud, why the CEO of Ferrari avoided a deepfake scam by asking about a book recommendation, and what it's like to build a startup while finishing dual degrees at RIT.

Jonathan grew up in Colorado as a soccer player with a naturally thin frame, which meant his mom was strict about calories. Three thousand a day. Oatmeal, protein shakes, eggs, and bacon for breakfast. Packed lunches with peanut butter and honey sandwiches made with local Colorado honey because he never liked jelly. Chips in the lunch pail. His dad had a serious sweet tooth and would sneak to Walmart every Friday for Twizzlers and Mike and Ikes, a secret candy run his no-sugar mom didn't approve of. Now he's on a jerk chicken kick, experimenting with Caribbean seasoning in his stepmom's air fryer, which he describes as "sorcery." His mornings start with Chobani yogurt, chia seeds, and fresh berries. He eats to live, not the other way around, but he still has the foodie essence in him.

When things go well at Real Recognizes Real AI, he celebrates with Chick-fil-A. When things aren't going well? Rice and beans. For multiple meals straight.

Listen for:

• The Friday candy ritual his dad kept secret from his mom
• Why peanut butter and honey beats peanut butter and jelly
• The air fryer and pressure cooker combo that gets dinner done in minutes
• How his mom is now building her own startup and they eat dinner together at the office

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"I ate Count Chocula every day for breakfast. I'm not kidding. Every day. From when I started chewing food until I was twenty-one."

Leanne Linsky, comedian turned entrepreneur and founder of live online comedy platform Plauzzable, on the cereal that defined her childhood and the letter she wrote to General Mills when there weren't enough marshmallows.

In this episode of Founders Fridge, host Heidi Knoblauch talks with Leanne about building a platform that lets comedians perform for live audiences online, going back to school for a master's in innovation mid-pandemic, and why she still needs to eat dinner at five o'clock sharp.

Leanne grew up in the Midwest, forty-five minutes outside Chicago. Meat and potatoes. Green Giant frozen corn, which was the only vegetable she'd touch. Dinner at the kitchen table every night, no TV allowed. She'd hide the vegetables she hated under her plate as if her mom wouldn't notice. Now she's mostly plant-based, her husband does the cooking, and their fridge is stocked with tofu, salsas, and Impossible chicken nuggets. She doesn't follow recipes. If it's not intuitive, why bother? She's a better baker anyway... she used to wake up early in New York, make brownies before work, and bring them to the office. She never ate them herself. She just liked how they made her apartment smell.

When things are going well at Plauzzable, they hit the fish market for scallops and king crab legs. When things aren't? Chips and salsa. Salty, savory, satisfying.

Listen for:

• The Count Chocula story (and the disappointing General Mills coupon)
• Why Leanne gets distracted cooking ("Oh wait, did I have the oven on?")
• The rice cooker Mexican dinner that's become a weeknight staple
• How a move from New York to LA traffic sparked the idea for online comedy

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"Food is a pharmacy. If you have premium gas, you're able to get more from your workouts, more gains."

Kamal Singh, cofounder and COO of Halitra, on why he treats food like fuel for startups—and why he won't buy anything if he can't pronounce what's on the label.

In this episode of Founders Fridge, host Heidi Knoblauch sits down with Kamal to talk about building a bootstrapped data company, pivoting from hardware to software, and why cooking has become both his creative outlet and his expression of love.

Kamal's week revolves around the farmer's market. He buys what's fresh, what's seasonal, and then forces himself to figure out what to do with it—because real food doesn't wait three weeks. Radishes and beets? Look up a recipe. Artichokes and leeks? YouTube it. His goal: master two to three dishes from every cuisine he falls in love with. Right now, it's Thai. Massaman curry. Green curry. Fish sauce and galangal and lemongrass—ingredients he never would have touched a year ago. Next up: pho, and the art of building a really good broth.

His wife is finishing med school, and that's reshaped everything about how Kamal thinks about food. He reads labels now. He makes his own salad dressing—avocado, olive oil, lime, salt, pepper, a little maple syrup. He skips the processed stuff. And when he cooks, he watches her face as she eats it. "That's a high," he says. "That's an amazing feeling."

Growing up, his mom did all the cooking—sixty percent Indian, forty percent Western. No turkey at Thanksgiving. Instead, holidays became a masala of cuisines: Indian, Singaporean, Indonesian, Malaysian. "Really good haul," he says. "Not your typical cranberry turkey."

His fridge? Eggs. Vegetables. Protein. Ketchup and Dijon—and that's about it for processed. Water with electrolytes. No seltzer. No mystery ingredients.

Listen for:

• How Halitra pivoted from hardware to software—and bootstrapped to six-figure ARR
• Why Kamal orients his entire week around farmer's market days
• The cuisines he's working to master (and why rendang and Massaman rank among the world's best dishes)
• What it means to cook with love when your partner is deep in med school

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“I have a one-page manifesto called The Book of Uri. Rule one: no cheese unless it’s on pizza. Rule two: nothing purple.”

In this episode of Founder’s Fridge, host Heidi Knoblauch sits down with Uri Geva, CEO of Cookie Dough Bliss, to talk about what it means to build a dessert franchise empire while eating like a kid. From buying and scaling franchise locations to leading a national brand with 27 stores sold (and counting), Uri shares how he’s raising capital through creative rounds, building culture with personality, and turning cookie dough into a public company.

He also opens up about growing up in Israel, the family meals that shaped him, and why he still eats to live (not live to eat). Expect stories about well-done steaks, plain burgers, Friday night Shabbat dinners, and why cookie dough might just be the perfect metaphor for entrepreneurship: comforting, simple, and a little messy.

🎧 Listen for:

• How Uri built Cookie Dough Bliss from a local brand to a national franchise
• What it takes to raise micro-rounds from accredited investors
• Why comfort food connects to culture, family, and faith
• The business lessons behind “The Book of Uri”

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"I stockpile food as a comfort. I'm never out of any type of pasta. Never."

Courtney Zaugg, founder of VentureVets—a 501(c)(3) accelerator supporting veteran and military spouse entrepreneurs—and co-owner of The Contractors, a general contracting company in Indianapolis, on why her pantry drawers won't close and why she made thirty different freezer meals in one week to prep for her husband's shoulder surgery.

This conversation gets real about what founders actually eat. Courtney comes from a lineage of food entrepreneurs—great grandfather, then grandparents with catering and wholesale, then parents with restaurants that ultimately failed—which shaped everything about how she thinks about food, comfort, and survival. Growing up poor after her parents lost their restaurants taught her: you never throw away food. You freeze it.

Her morning? Skip breakfast. Just coffee. Lots of coffee. Then up and at it, traveling often for work. Her lunch? Small meal at home or meetings on the road. But dinner? That's sacred. Home-cooked meals from batch cooking on Sundays—a tradition since early in her relationship with her Marine Corps veteran husband.

Her system: Make big meals on weekends. Tacos, wonton soup, chicken soup, grilled meats. Make extras. Freeze the rest. Pull them out when it's busy. Because Courtney does not like making a meal every night. She loves making big meals from her Greek-American upbringing where food brought everyone together. Just not every single night.

Her fridge? Dairy everywhere—eggs, cheese sticks, cottage cheese, yogurt, lunch meat—even though her husband is allergic to milk. Her pantry? Overflowing with pasta (never runs out), cereal, trail mix, Cheez-Its, applesauce, protein bars—so full she can't close the drawers. Her freezer? A frozen turkey from Easter. Thirty different meals prepped in July (because her family demands variety, not fifteen identical chicken soups).

But here's what matters: Courtney protects Dessert First Fridays. School pickup, ice cream at the local spot, home for pizza and a movie in PJs. Food isn't restricted. It's celebrated. Nothing is off limits. Creating positive memories around food for her daughter.

Courtney also shares how her parents shut down after losing their restaurants and never taught her to cook (she learned from her grandmother), why her husband quarterbacks the morning routine so everyone gets fed, and how batch cooking isn't just efficiency—it's paying homage to her family while fueling a life building multiple businesses.

CONNECT WITH VENTUREVETS: Website: TheVentureVets.com LinkedIn: VentureVets

MORE FOUNDERS FRIDGE: Website: www.foundersfridge.com Substack: https://substack.com/@foundersfridge Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2535711

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What do selling wild fruit in Albania and building a global tech company have in common?

In this episode of Founders Fridge, host Heidi Knoblauch sits down with Arbër Kadia, Co-founder of Patoko, to talk about growing up in a resourceful family, learning entrepreneurship through necessity, and turning that same creativity into a company building a “super app” for everyday life.

Arbër grew up in communist Albania, where his grandfather taught him how to work with what you have—and his grandmother taught him how to make it taste good. From selling fruit at an open market as a kid to cooking for ten roommates in college just to skip paying for food, Arbër’s story is about hustle.

Arbër talks about the invention behind survival cooking, the patience behind good eggplant casserole, and the dream of making life simpler through tech built in Tirana and designed for the world.

Listen to hear:

• How Arbër learned business by selling wild fruit as a child
• The story behind Patoko and its vision for a connected daily life
• What Albanian food taught him about care and craft
• Why greasy burgers are his comfort food on tough days
• What’s actually in his fridge (feta, salami, and too many avocados)

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What if staying connected to home means filling your entire trunk with Chinese food and driving it three hours north?

In this episode of Founders Fridge, host Heidi Knoblauch sits down with Jane Chen, founder and CEO of Letterly, to talk about what happens when you can't just eat any food. You need the food from your childhood to keep going.

Jane grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, five minutes from Flushing, now the largest Chinatown in the USA. As a scholarship kid and elite competitive swimmer, she was crushing 3,000-4,000 calories a day at all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets. Food was fuel, plain and simple. That relationship carried her through Wall Street, where she lived on Seamless budgets during M&A heydays, and later to Germany, where she finally learned that maybe you can't sustain yourself on pizza and beer alone.

Today, as Jane scales Letterly (an AI-enabled writing platform that grew from 30 students in a Saratoga classroom to 4,000 students nationwide, including Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant), she still makes regular runs to Flushing. Her trunk comes back loaded. Her freezer holds carp heads and frozen fish balls. And her cooking style? "Boiling things in flavorful broth."

But there's one thing Jane protects fiercely: dinner. Not as fuel, but as connection. It's where she reconnects with friends and family after days that start with European dev team calls before coffee and end with evening walks with her dog pack.

This conversation is about food as identity, fuel as strategy, and why some meals matter more than others when you're building something from the ground up.

Listen to hear:

• How Letterly went from brick-and-mortar writing school to venture-backed platform
• Why Jane can't just eat "food generally." It has to be authentic Chinese food from Flushing
• What a former investment banker who never learned to cook actually eats while building a startup
• The one routine Jane refuses to compromise (hint: it involves dogs and hiking)
• What's really in a busy founder's fridge and freezer

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What does startup life look like when your boardroom is a barn and your coworkers are three donkeys named Sassy Ass, Sir Assalot, and Total Ass?

In this episode of Founder’s Fridge, host Heidi Knoblauch sits down with Hailee Greene, founder and Chief Everything Officer of GreeneAcres Processing, which aims to become New York’s first full-scale industrial hemp processing company.

Hailee shares her journey from working in politics—where she learned that every campaign is basically a startup—to building two companies, including a Cornell-backed spinout, Pomace Plus, that transforms grape pomace (the byproduct of winemaking) into a superfood and antibiotic alternative.

From growing up in a Rockland County deli family to running a 265-acre farm in Boonville, Hailee’s story is about building from the ground up—literally. She opens up about her food rituals, rural life, startup lessons, and the now-famous Bacon Blueberry Shallot Jam Burger with Grilled Halloumi that stole the show.

💡 In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How Hailee is leading hemp innovation in New York State
• The connection between farming, food, and entrepreneurship
• What it is really like to build startups from a rural community
• The habits and rituals that keep her balanced
• The story (and recipe) behind her twelve-out-of-ten burger

📖 Get the full burger recipe on Substack: https://substack.com/@foundersfridge

🎧 Listen to more episodes of Founder’s Fridge: www.foundersfridge.com

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