Kalpa Labs founding engineer on going from infra to ML research in five months
Y Combinator Blog · rss · 2026-10-31
YC F25 company Kalpa Labs, building generalist audio models, profiles founding engineer #1 Harsh Vardhan Goenka. Key points:
- Ex-Rubrik: helped build Rubrik Cloud Vault early on and rewrote testing infra so hour-long suites ran in minutes; ICPC World Finals competitor.
- The interview: a 3-hour filesystem problem starting at 11 PM on a spare Windows laptop.
- The thesis: audio hasn't had its GPT-3 moment — one model that can voice podcasts from scripts, sing in your voice, and follow mood/tone prompts.
- Role shift: joined for ML infra, pushed into ML research with no prior expertise; company philosophy says stretching into the unfamiliar brings fresh perspectives.
- His hierarchy for evaluating startups: team first, then what you're building, then runway. The company is hiring.
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