Soham Parekh breaks silence: the engineer who worked 5 startups simultaneously explains why he did it

Summary

Soham Parekh, the Mumbai-born engineer who went viral after being accused of simultaneously holding full-time roles at up to five startups, confirmed the arrangement publicly for the first time. He frames it not as a scheme but as financial desperation that began around 2022, after deferred grad school plans and deteriorating personal finances left him feeling he had no alternative. Working an estimated 140 hours per week, he insists every line of code was written by him personally, a claim corroborated by at least three named employers who pair-programmed with him directly.

How It Worked

Parekh targeted early-stage startups rather than big tech deliberately. His argument is that he genuinely cared about what he was building, and that caring was a prerequisite for sustaining the workload. Companies including Antimetal, Sink Labs, and others hired him after take-home assessments and work trials rather than LeetCode-style interviews, a format he says he would have failed. He describes cold-emailing founders with deep product research baked in, not generic outreach.

He denies running a subcontracted team of junior developers beneath him, denies using AI interview-assistance tools like Cluely, and says AI coding tools such as Claude Code and Cursor improved his efficiency but did not cause him to add more jobs. He consistently chose lower cash, higher equity compensation packages, equity that was effectively worthless to him anyway because his immigration status as an India-based contractor made vesting contingent on a US visa he did not have.

The Fallout

The story broke when Suhail at Playground called him out publicly on X. Parekh joined Twitter the same day the accusations surfaced. Several founders who had terminated him still reached out personally to offer support and advice, which he cites as evidence the work he delivered was real. No company has alleged data breaches, security failures, or material harm tied to his arrangement.

He says the better path would have been transparency with founders about his financial situation, asking either for higher pay or explicit permission to take supplemental work. He acknowledges he did neither, citing personal embarrassment and poor instinct for sharing internal struggles.

What Comes Next

Parekh has signed an exclusive founding engineer agreement with Darwin, described as an AI-driven video platform targeting user-generated content. He says a product launch is expected within roughly one month. He committed on the record to holding no other simultaneous roles and plans to issue individual apologies to every founder affected. His verified X account is @realParekh, with multiple impersonator accounts already circulating.

Broader Signal

The episode surfaces a structural gap in startup hiring: there is no established mechanism for a high-output engineer willing to work 100-plus hours weekly to be compensated proportionally at a single company, the way Wall Street explicitly prices and absorbs that capacity. Parekh consistently took equity-heavy deals that, given his visa uncertainty, delivered no near-term financial benefit. The case also renews pressure on remote-first hiring norms, employer monitoring practices, and whether standard moonlighting clauses in startup offer letters are specific enough to be enforceable.