How Harsh Vardhan Goenka became founding engineer #1 at Kalpa Labs
From ICPC World Finals to competitive programming clubs to building generalist audio models as the first engineer at a YC startup.
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How David Mount became employee #2 (for the second time) at 10x Science
by Ryan Choi10/30/2026
A veteran engineer finds his next act helping scientists discover cures, one amino acid at a time, at YC W26 startup 10x Science.
How Yair Alon went from building Portrait Mode at Google to founding researcher at Poetiq
by Ryan Choi10/30/2026
After 10 years at Google Research and DeepMind, Yair Alon joined Poetiq to build an AI that improves itself.
How Varsha Parthasarathy became engineer #1 at Flex — solving a problem she'd experienced
by Ryan Choi10/30/2026
From Lyft's self-driving division to fixing HSA/FSA payments, Varsha joined Flex as its first engineer and built from scratch.
How Sherif Amer went from electronics engineer to employee #1 at Indemni
by Ryan Choi10/30/2026
A layoff, two years of travel, and a self-taught pivot to software led Sherif Amer to become the founding engineer at Indemni.
How Alex Lee became the first engineer at Magic Patterns
by Ryan Choi10/28/2026
Alex Lee left his own startup to join Magic Patterns as founding engineer — and built a slide deck feature in a weekend.
How Vin Bui became engineer #1 at Nowadays — and started treating it like his own company
by Ryan Choi10/20/2026
Vin found Nowadays on Work at a Startup, saw a codebase he could fix, and joined as the first engineer. Now he builds AI voice tools and mentors the team.
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