Numerous accounts of interactions with Soham Parekh, a software engineer who appears to have been concurrently employed at many Silicon Valley firms for the past few years without the companies’ knowledge, have been shared on social media in the past week.
However, who is Parekh, how did he manage to make a living as a serial moonlighter, and why is he so popular in Silicon Valley?
Origins of virality
The story began on Tuesday when Suhail Doshi, CEO of Playground AI, a business that creates images, posted on X: PSA: Soham Parekh is an Indian man who works at three or four businesses concurrently. He has been taking advantage of YC businesses and others. Beware.”
According to Doshi, he sacked Parekh from Playground AI around a year ago after learning that he was employed by other businesses. “[I] advised him to quit deceiving and scamming people.” A year later, he has not stopped,” Doshi stated.
About 20 million people viewed Doshi’s message, which led a number of other founders to relate similar encounters with Parekh.
According to Flo Crivello, CEO of Lindy, a firm that uses AI to assist individuals streamline their processes, he hired Parekh a few weeks ago but sacked him after reading Doshi’s tweet.
Parekh was the company’s first engineering hiring in 2022, according to Matt Parkhurst, CEO of Antimetal, a startup that specializes in automated cloud administration. Antimetal fired Parekh in early 2023 after discovering he was working part-time for other companies, Parkhurst tells TechCrunch.
Parekh also appears to have participated in a promotional film for Sync Labs, a firm that creates an AI lip-synching tool. In the end, he was fired.
Parekh eventually sent applications to a number of firms supported by Y Combinator. Parekh was given a position as a founding engineer by Haz Hubble, co-founder of Pally AI, a business financed by Y Combinator that is developing a “AI relationship management platform.” Adish Jain, a co-founder of the AI video editing startup Mosaic, which has YC backing, claimed to have interviewed Parekh for a position as well.
These businesses were contacted by TechCrunch for comment, but they did not reply right away.
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