Within the final week, social media customers have shared dozens of tales about encounters with Soham Parekh, a software program engineer who appears to have been concurrently working at a number of Silicon Valley startups — unbeknownst to the businesses — for the final a number of years.
However who’s Parekh, how did he pull off his profession as a serial moonlighter, and why can’t Silicon Valley get sufficient of him?
Origins of virality
The saga all began when Suhail Doshi — CEO of picture technology startup, Playground AI — shared a post Tuesday on X that started: “PSA: there’s a man named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups on the identical time. He’s been preying on YC firms and extra. Beware.”
Doshi claims that, roughly a 12 months in the past, he fired Parekh from Playground AI after he discovered he was working at different firms. “[I] instructed him to cease mendacity/scamming individuals. He hasn’t stopped a 12 months later,” Doshi wrote.
That publish from Doshi acquired roughly 20 million views and prompted a number of different founders to share their run-ins with Parekh as effectively.
Flo Crivello, the CEO of Lindy, a startup that helps individuals automate their workflows with AI, mentioned he hired Parekh in recent weeks, however fired him in mild of Doshi’s tweet.
Matt Parkhurst, the CEO of Antimetal, a startup that makes use of AI to chop down on enterprises’ cloud spending, confirmed that Parekh was the company’s first engineering hire in 2022. He mentioned Antimetal shortly let Parekh go after they realized he was moonlighting at different firms.
Parekh also seems to have worked at Sync Labs, a startup that makes an AI lip-synching software, the place he even starred in a promotional video. He was finally let go.
Sooner or later, Parekh utilized to a number of Y Combinator-backed startups. Haz Hubble, the co-founder of Pally AI, a Y Combinator-backed startup constructing an “AI relationship administration platform,” says he offered Parekh a founding engineer role. Adish Jain, the co-founder of YC-backed Mosaic — an AI video enhancing startup — mentioned he interviewed Parekh for a task, too.
TechCrunch has reached out to those firms for remark, however they didn’t instantly reply.
It seems that Parekh did fairly effectively in lots of of those interviews and acquired gives, largely as a result of he’s a gifted software program engineer.
As an illustration, Rohan Pandey, a founding analysis engineer of the YC-backed startup Reworkd, instructed TechCrunch that he interviewed Parekh for a task and he was a robust candidate. Pandey, who’s not with the startup, says Parekh was one of many prime three performers on an algorithms-focused interview they gave candidates.
Pandey mentioned the Reworkd group suspected one thing was off with Parekh. On the time, Parekh instructed Reworkd he was within the U.S. — a requirement for the job — however the firm didn’t consider him. They ran an IP logger on a Zoom link from Parekh and positioned him in India.
Pandey recalled different issues Parekh mentioned typically didn’t add up, and a few of his GitHub contributions and former roles didn’t fairly make sense both. That appears to be a standard expertise when coping with Parekh.
Adam Silverman, co-founder of the AI agent observability startup, Agency, instructed TechCrunch his firm additionally interviewed Parekh. Silverman mentioned Parekh despatched him a chilly DM a couple of job opening at Company, they usually arrange a gathering. Parekh needed to reschedule that assembly 5 occasions, in accordance with Silverman and emails from Parekh considered by TechCrunch.
Silverman says he was additionally impressed by Parekh’s technical capacity, however within the interview, he insisted on working remotely. Very similar to with Reworkd, that was a purple flag for Company.
Roy Lee, the CEO of the “cheat on everything” AI startup, Cluely, tells TechCrunch he interviewed Parekh twice for a task. Lee mentioned Parekh interviews fairly effectively and “appeared to have sturdy react data,” referencing a preferred JavaScript library for constructing consumer interfaces.
Lee says Cluely didn’t find yourself hiring Parekh. Nevertheless, a number of different firms clearly did.
Parekh’s perspective
Parekh made an look on the Expertise Brother Podcast Community (TBPN) on Thursday to inform co-hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays his aspect of the story and clarify why he’s labored at so many firms.
He admitted that he’s been working at a number of jobs concurrently since 2022. Parekh claims he was not utilizing AI instruments or hiring junior software program engineers to help him together with his workload.
All that work has made Parekh a significantly better programmer, he believes, however notes that it’s taken a toll.
Parekh mentioned he’s infamous amongst his mates for not sleeping. He repeated a number of occasions all through the interview that he works 140 hours every week, which comes out to twenty hours a day, seven days every week. That appears to be borderline not possible – or on the very least, extraordinarily unhealthy and unsustainable.
Parekh additionally mentioned he took a number of jobs as a result of he was in “monetary jeopardy,” implying he wanted all of the revenue he might get from his numerous employers. He claims he deferred going to a graduate college program he had been accepted to, and as a substitute determined to work at a number of startups concurrently.
Notably, Doshi shared a copy of Parekh’s resumé that claims he acquired a masters diploma from Georgia Institute of Expertise.
When TBPN’s co-hosts requested why Parekh didn’t simply ask one firm to lift his wage and assist together with his monetary struggles, Parekh mentioned he favored to maintain a boundary between his skilled and personal life. (However he had additionally opted for low salaries and excessive fairness in any respect his jobs, which doesn’t fairly add up together with his monetary disaster story. Nevertheless, Parekh declined to share extra about it.)
Parekh instructed the hosts he genuinely beloved his work, and it was not solely in regards to the cash. He says he was very invested within the missions of all the businesses the place he labored.
He additionally admitted that he’s not pleased with what he’s achieved, and he doesn’t endorse it.
What now?
Some are calling Parekh a rip-off artist and a liar, however in basic Silicon Valley trend, Parekh seems to be making an attempt to show his viral second right into a enterprise.
Parekh introduced his latest employer, which he claims to be solely working at: Darwin Studios, a startup engaged on AI video remixing.
Nevertheless, Parekh quickly deleted the post after announcing it, as did the founder and CEO of the startup, Sanjit Juneja.
TechCrunch has reached out to Parekh requesting an interview concerning this text, nonetheless, he has not but accepted. As an alternative, a spokesperson representing him despatched TechCrunch an announcement from Darwin’s CEO.
“Soham is an extremely gifted engineer and we consider in his talents to assist carry our merchandise to market,” mentioned Juneja.
We’ve seen numerous startups flip their viral, typically controversial, moments into companies within the final 12 months. One of the well-known is Cluely, which is understood for creating provocative advertising campaigns. It’s rage bait, but it surely’s attention-grabbing, and it was sufficient to land Cluely a $15 million seed round from Andreessen Horowitz.
Maybe, Parekh will land an analogous fortune sooner or later.