In the last week, social media users have shared dozens of stories about encounters with Soham Parekh, a software engineer who seems to have been simultaneously working at multiple Silicon Valley startups — unbeknownst to the companies — for the last several years.
But who is Parekh, how did he pull off his career as a serial moonlighter, and why can’t Silicon Valley get enough of him?
Origins of virality
The saga all started when Suhail Doshi — CEO of image generation startup Playground AI — shared a post Tuesday on X that began: “PSA: there's a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups at the same time. He's been preying on YC companies and more. Beware.”
Doshi claims that, roughly a year ago, he fired Parekh from Playground AI after he found out he was working at other companies. “[I] told him to stop lying/scamming people. He hasn't stopped a year later,” Doshi wrote.
PSA: there's a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups at the same time. He's been preying on YC companies and more. Beware.
— Suhail (@Suhail) July 2, 2025
I fired this guy in his first week and told him to stop lying / scamming people. He hasn't stopped a year later. No more excuses.
That post from Doshi received roughly 20 million views and prompted several other founders to share their run-ins with Parekh as well.
Flo Crivello, the CEO of Lindy, a startup that helps people automate their workflows with AI, said he hired Parekh in recent weeks, but fired him in light of Doshi’s tweet.
Holy shit. We hired this guy a week ago. Fired this morning. He did so incredibly well in interviews, must have a lot of training. Careful out there. https://t.co/XP33febCYs
— Flo Crivello (@Altimor) July 2, 2025
Matt Parkhurst, the CEO of Antimetal, a startup that uses AI to cut down on enterprises’ cloud spending, confirmed that Parekh was the company’s first engineering hire in 2022. He said Antimetal quickly let Parekh go after they realized he was moonlighting at other companies.
Parekh also seems to have worked at Sync Labs, a startup that makes an AI lip-synching tool, where he even starred in a promotional video. He was ultimately let go.
At some point, Parekh applied to several Y Combinator-backed startups. Haz Hubble, the co-founder of Pally AI, a Y Combinator-backed startup building an “AI relationship management platform,” says he offered Parekh a founding engineer role. Adish Jain, the co-founder of YC-backed Mosaic — an AI video editing startup — said he interviewed Parekh for a role, too.
Technewss has reached out to these companies for comment, but they did not immediately respond.
something weird about when we offered soham…
— Haz Hubble (@hazhubble) July 2, 2025
he was very pro-equity vs salary
like dramatically so
maybe because he knows that's what founders wanna hear?
but it doesn't fit with trying to earn as much money as possible if he knows he's gonna get fired shortly after
i…
It turns out that Parekh did quite well in many of these interviews and received offers, largely because he’s a gifted software engineer.
For instance, Rohan Pandey, a founding research engineer of the YC-backed startup Reworkd, told Technewss that he interviewed Parekh for a role and he was a strong candidate. Pandey, who is no longer with the startup, says Parekh was one of the top three performers on an algorithms-focused interview they gave candidates.
Pandey said the Reworkd team suspected something was off with Parekh. At the time, Parekh told Reworkd he was in the U.S. — a requirement for the job — but the company didn’t believe him. They ran an IP logger on a Zoom link from Parekh and located him in India.
omg just remembered my fav soham parekh story
call 1: says he's in US but we suspect he's in india
call 2: we call his bs, he admits “was in india last week to visit family, but now back in US”
call 3: @asimdotshrestha puts an IP logger on zoom link and it shows up in mumbai