You were given into Y Combinator, raised $20 million from a16z, after which exited to Meta? That’s cool, I suppose. However did Soham Parekh follow to paintings at your startup?
There may be now a brand new badge of honor for startup founders: your proximity to 1 up to now unknown Indian instrument engineer named Soham Parekh.
The Anna Delvey of Silicon Valley used to be outed on Wednesday when former Mixpanel CEO Suhail Doshi posted on X to warn fellow founders about Parekh.
“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 corporations and extra. Beware,” Doshi wrote. “I fired this man in his first week and informed him to forestall mendacity/scamming other people. He hasn’t stopped a yr later.”
Now, the submit has over 20 million perspectives, with founders and buyers from around the tech business weighing in. And sooner than Andy Jassy asks — may this have all been have shyed away from if extra corporations returned to the place of work? No, some individuals are simply dangerous managers.
In line with Doshi, no less than 3 founders have reached out to mention that they’d fired or had been these days using Parekh.
Within the age of subreddit communities like r/overemployed, the place contributors discuss easy methods to break out with running a couple of far flung jobs without delay, this revelation isn’t all that unexpected. What’s extra fascinating is how broadly the responses to his movements range (to be honest, nobody ever mentioned that the tech business used to be identified for its ethical fiber).
To a couple within the tech group, Parekh has the makings of a folks hero, deceiving well-funded startups and sticking it to the person. To others, he’s an immoral liar who screwed over startups and took jobs clear of individuals who in fact would have given their all. Many are inspired via how he controlled to get via such a lot of notoriously aggressive interview processes, whilst others suppose he must parlay his quarter-hour of repute into founding his personal startup.
“If Soham in an instant comes blank and says he used to be running to coach an AI agent for wisdom paintings, he raises at $100M pre via the weekend,” Field CEO Aaron Levie wrote on X.
Chris Bakke — the founding father of Laskie, a job-matching platform bought via X — thinks that Soham must embody his recognition.
“Soham Parekh wishes to start out an interview prep corporate. He’s obviously one of the vital largest interviewers of all time,” Bakke wrote. “He must publicly recognize that he did one thing dangerous and route right kind to the item he’s best 1% at.”
In the meantime, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan took the chance to pat himself at the again.
“With out the YC group this man would nonetheless be running and would have possibly by no means been stuck,” Tan wrote. “The startup guild of YC is a vital invention to assist founders be extra a success than they’d be by myself.”
Why did he do it? Parekh says that this wasn’t a part of some grand plan — he claims he had no plan in any respect, and he used to be seeking to make some huge cash in no time to get himself out of a nasty monetary scenario.
“I in reality didn’t suppose this via,” Parekh mentioned in a reside interview with TBPN. “It used to be an motion that used to be performed extra out of desperation.”
Parekh didn’t deal with Doshi’s allegation that the majority of his resume used to be faux.
“What’s additionally humorous is, , one of the most memes,” he mentioned. “I’m very new to Twitter. I joined Twitter the day past, so this used to be a lesson for me in social media basically.” (Twitter has lengthy been referred to as X, in fact.)
You don’t have at hand it to him, however he’s a sexy just right poster for somebody who’s been at the platform for an afternoon. Certainly one of his few posts used to be a reaction to LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who requested what other people suppose Parekh’s LinkedIn header could be.
“I don’t have a LinkedIn,” Parekh replied.
For what it’s value, his X header is at the cash, even though he received’t hassle with LinkedIn. It’s the meme of Flynn Rider from the Disney film “Tangled” — a smug-looking man about to state a debatable opinion, surrounded via knives on both sides.
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