Who’s Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups cannot cease hiring?
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 era startup Playground AI — shared a submit Tuesday on X that started: “PSA: there’s a man named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups on the similar time. He’s been preying on YC corporations 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 corporations. “[I] instructed him to cease mendacity/scamming folks. He hasn’t stopped a 12 months later,” Doshi wrote.
That submit from Doshi obtained roughly 20 million views and prompted a number of different founders to share their run-ins with Parekh as nicely.
Flo Crivello, the CEO of Lindy, a startup that helps folks automate their workflows with AI, stated he employed Parekh in current weeks, however fired him in gentle 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 corporate’s first engineering rent in 2022. He stated Antimetal rapidly let Parekh go after they realized he was moonlighting at different corporations.
Parekh additionally appears to have labored at Sync Labs, a startup that makes an AI lip-synching instrument, the place he even starred in a promotional video. He was finally let go.
In some unspecified time in the future, 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 provided Parekh a founding engineer position. Adish Jain, the co-founder of YC-backed Mosaic — an AI video modifying startup — stated he interviewed Parekh for a job, too.
TechCrunch has reached out to those corporations for remark, however they didn’t instantly reply.
It seems that Parekh did fairly nicely in lots of of those interviews and obtained affords, 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 job and he was a robust candidate. Pandey, who’s now not with the startup, says Parekh was one of many high three performers on an algorithms-focused interview they gave candidates.
Pandey stated the Reworkd staff 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 hyperlink from Parekh and situated him in India.
Pandey recalled different issues Parekh stated usually 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 typical expertise when coping with Parekh.
Adam Silverman, co-founder of the AI agent observability startup, Company, instructed TechCrunch his firm additionally interviewed Parekh. Silverman stated Parekh despatched him a chilly DM a few job opening at Company, and so they arrange a gathering. Parekh needed to reschedule that assembly 5 instances, in accordance with Silverman and emails from Parekh considered by TechCrunch.
Silverman says he was additionally impressed by Parekh’s technical means, 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 every little thing” AI startup, Cluely, tells TechCrunch he interviewed Parekh twice for a job. Lee stated Parekh interviews fairly nicely and “appeared to have sturdy react information,” referencing a well-liked JavaScript library for constructing person interfaces.
Lee says Cluely didn’t find yourself hiring Parekh. Nevertheless, a number of different corporations 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 corporations.
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 along with his workload.
All that work has made Parekh a significantly better programmer, he believes, however notes that it’s taken a toll.
Parekh stated he’s infamous amongst his pals for not sleeping. He repeated a number of instances all through the interview that he works 140 hours per week, which comes out to twenty hours a day, seven days per week. That appears to be borderline inconceivable — or on the very least, extraordinarily unhealthy and unsustainable.
Parekh additionally stated he took a number of jobs as a result of he was in “monetary jeopardy,” implying he wanted all of the earnings he might get from his numerous employers. He claims he deferred going to a graduate college program he had been accepted to, and as an alternative determined to work at a number of startups concurrently.
Notably, Doshi shared a duplicate of Parekh’s resumé that claims he obtained 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 along with his monetary struggles, Parekh stated he preferred 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 along with his monetary disaster story. Nevertheless, Parekh declined to share extra about it.)
Parekh instructed the hosts he genuinely liked his work, and it was not solely concerning 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 happy with what he’s performed, and he doesn’t endorse it.
What now?
Some are calling Parekh a rip-off artist and a liar, however in traditional Silicon Valley vogue, Parekh seems to be attempting to show his viral second right into a enterprise.
Parekh introduced his latest employer, which he claims to be completely working at: Darwin Studios, a startup engaged on AI video remixing.
Nevertheless, Parekh rapidly deleted the submit after asserting it, as did the founder and CEO of the startup, Sanjit Juneja.
TechCrunch has reached out to Parekh requesting an interview relating to 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 proficient engineer and we consider in his talents to assist deliver our merchandise to market,” stated Juneja.
We’ve seen numerous startups flip their viral, usually controversial, moments into companies within the final 12 months. Some of the well-known is Cluely, which is understood for creating provocative advertising campaigns. It’s rage bait, however it’s attention-grabbing, and it was sufficient to land Cluely a $15 million seed spherical from Andreessen Horowitz.
Maybe Parekh will land the same fortune sooner or later.