Inside the rarely used fridges of 20-something tech founders

• Six young tech founders opened up their refrigerators for Business Insider. Many of them were nearly empty.
• Most of the founders said they rely on takeout and delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats to provide their meals.
• One founder said that it had been “months” since he’d opened his fridge, revealing over two dozen cartons of almond milk.

Startup founders aren’t known for their culinary skills.

Bill Gates said he “never really learned how to cook.” Sam Altman apparently sears using the wrong olive oil. Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta founded his company after looking at a refrigerator only stocked with hot sauce.

Nowadays, amid the AI boom and a grind-forward culture of “locking in,” many startup founders don’t cook at all. Why break your 12-hour coding sprint to grill a burger?

Six young tech founders, ranging in age from 22 to 29, opened their fridges for Business Insider. Only one said they consistently cooked; the others relied on delivery services and takeout.

Take a look inside:

Josh Sirota, 29

When 29-year-old Eragon founder Josh Sirota opened his fridge, his description was simple: “Nothing much.”

The fridge is “pretty empty,” he said, pointing to some apple sodas, yogurts, and protein shakes.

Sirota agreed that he survives mostly on takeout and delivery — there was a leftover Uber Eats bag on his desk — but said that “we actually have to restock” the fridge.

“Note the singular Modelo, just one,” Sirota said. “As you can tell, no one really drinks.”

Sirota is among a growing class of young tech entrepreneurs who don’t consume much, if any, alcohol. When he opened his freezer, there were a few ice cream bars — and a couple more Modelos.

“To show you how little people actually know about or have alcohol, someone thought that beers go in the freezer,” he said.

Boris Skurikhin, 25

Boris Skurikhin, the 25-year-old founder of Docket, hadn’t opened his fridge “in a long time.”

“It’s probably been months,” he said. He gets most of his meals via DoorDash or from a local chicken and rice spot near the office.

Opening the door, Skurikhin found over two dozen cartons of almond milk. It’s an “impressive amount,” he said, explaining that his cofounder and roommate likes to put almond milk in his smoothies.

Going through the fridge’s door, Skurikhin pointed to a bottle of champagne gifted to them by Rippling, some bottles of kombucha, and yet another carton of almond milk.

Opening up his freezer, Skurikhin found some frozen berries, also for his cofounder’s smoothies.

Jackson Stokes, 26

Jackson Stokes, the 26-year-old cofounder of TrainLoop, cares about his health. Next to his fridge, Stokes showed off his apartment’s stack of supplements. Inside the fridge, he had a rotisserie chicken.

“Usually we just eat a lot of salads with stuff on top of that,” he said. He pulled out a clear drawer, where he said he keeps “a lot of extra protein from Costco.”

Stokes seems to be eating his protein: By the time he sent a photo of his fridge to Business Insider, the rotisserie chicken and clear drawer contents were gone.

The TrainLoop cofounders pay themselves “just enough for healthcare,” Stokes said, so they have to strike a balance between healthy eating and cost-consciousness.

As for his delivery-ordering peers, Stokes said that he was learning to spend more on takeout. He grew up “pretty frugal,” Stokes said, and delivery felt like a “luxury.”

“Until six months ago, I had DoorDash’d or Uber Eats’d a total of three times in my life,” he said.

Kavitta Ghai, 28

28-year-old Nectir cofounder Kavitta Ghai said she had the “classic startup founder fridge.”

Ghai is living out of an Airbnb in New York, where she has moved her team for two months to raise Nectir’s Series A. Her fridge at home in California is “pretty identical,” she said: sparkling water, a Brita filter, and a bottle of wine because “you never know.”

“DoorDash is my best friend,” Ghai said. Before our call, she ordered herself some food and a hot tea from Poppy’s; the bag still sits on her counter.

In the door of her fridge, Ghai also has some classic condiments: ketchup, mayonnaise, and Chick-fil-A sauce. Those are for her most time-strapped meals.

“If I really don’t have time to DoorDash, I’ll boil an egg, and that is my breakfast, and usually my lunch and dinner also,” she said.

Haokun Qin, 23

Haokun Qin said he only keeps fruit in his fridge.

The 23-year-old Gale cofounder is living in Toronto with his cofounder. They spent four months in San Francisco participating in Y Combinator and fundraising, but didn’t want to overstay their visitor’s visas.

Qin used to cook a lot, he said, but now it’s mostly takeout. If he wants to cook something, he said he’ll go to Walmart and buy the ingredients.

“Otherwise, it just goes stale after a week or two,” he said. “It’s just unpredictable.

Regina Lin, 22

22-year-old Regina Lin shares her fridge with the other employees who live in the San Francisco office loft space of ThirdLayer, the company she cofounded.

Opening up her fridge, Lin said that they “don’t have much in her except leftovers.”

The team purchased many of the items in the fridge long ago and forgot about them, from avocados to cheese. “The eggs — probably months ago,” Lin said.

A few months ago, the company took a trip to Costco, Lin said. They thought it would be a good idea to stock up on chicken in bulk, also buying a “ginormous” folded-over pork rib.

“This was probably two months ago,” Lin said. “We never had time to cook.”

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