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Insight
In early 2025, EatCookJoy—the chef marketplace founded by Zainab Ghadiyali—had to shut the company down during a major AI-driven cybercrime attempt. No product, no platform. This is a grounded, non-speculative look at how the team rebuilt the system, protected customer trust, and crossed $1M ARR in seven months with effectively zero marketing spend.
Written by Aravind Srinivas, early engineer at Rupa Health and Founder & CEO of HyperNest Labs. This article reflects public information and operator perspective—no speculation on confidential details.
Table of contents
Two weeks before a major launch window, a global crime group targeted EatCookJoy. As Zainab has shared publicly, paying ransom was a non-starter. The decision was clear but hard: shut down, protect customer data and investor capital, and rebuild from a secure foundation.
That meant treating the incident as both a security event and a product reset. The goal was not just to get back online, but to come back with a platform that could sustain national scale.
HyperNest's role was to act as fractional CTO for the marketplace: partner on the threat model, rebuild the core surfaces, and ensure the new system behaved like an asset in future diligence or media coverage, not a liability.
As Zainab has highlighted publicly, EatCookJoy went from shutdown to roughly $550K ARR in five months, and then crossed $1M ARR in seven months—all while in beta and without paid marketing. That growth came from execution, community, and a product that made it easier for chefs to earn more while working fewer hours.
Technically, that looked like: faster booking flows, reliable payouts, and operational tooling that let the team scale hospitality, not just code. The engineering work supported a narrative where AI runs behind the scenes and humans stay at the center.
For a more structured breakdown of the engagement, see the EatCookJoy case study or talk with us about fractional CTO support and VAPT & security programs for your own marketplace.