How Harsh Vardhan Goenka became founding engineer #1 at Kalpa Labs

Before Harsh Vardhan Goenka joined Kalpa Labs, he was at Rubrik Inc., where he helped build Rubrik Cloud Vault from its early days and rewrote the company's testing infrastructure so that test suites that took hours ran in minutes. He'd always gravitated toward small teams and hard problems — competitive programming took him to the ICPC World Finals, and engineering at scale brought him to Rubrik. But the pull toward something smaller, scrappier, and more frontier kept growing. When his former college seniors founded Kalpa Labs (YC F25), a company building generalist audio models, the timing finally clicked.

An 11 PM interview on a spare Windows laptop

Harsh knew the Kalpa Labs founders, Prashant and Gautam, from undergrad, where they'd co-founded a competitive programming club and spent hours debating algorithmic and mathematical problems. When Prashant first offered him a role, Harsh passed. But conversations continued, and four months later, he was looking for a change. Prashant asked if he'd like to interview for an open position.

"It was roughly 11 PM and all I had was a spare Windows laptop," Harsh says. "I ended up giving a 3 hour long interview, where I was given a problem around file system. I hadn't felt the same rush in the last few months, what I felt during that interview." He pauses. "All I feel it is God's plan."

What Kalpa Labs is building — and why it matters

Kalpa Labs is building generalist audio models. The vision is that audio hasn't had its GPT-3 moment yet. Rather than being limited to text-to-speech, the team wants one model that can voice a podcast from a script, sing a song in your voice, or generate audio that follows a detailed text prompt describing mood and tone. Some of those capabilities are already unlocked.

The coolest thing Harsh says he's built? "A voice model that sounds like human. Not kidding."

From infra engineer to ML researcher in five months

Harsh joined as Founding Engineer and Researcher, initially focused on ML infrastructure and software problems. But from day one, his founders pushed him toward ML research — a domain where he had no prior expertise.

"It has not always felt the best because there were times where I was clueless," he says. But that discomfort is part of the Kalpa Labs philosophy: everyone on the team is expected to stretch into unfamiliar territory. The thinking is that when someone builds expertise in a new domain, they bring a fresh perspective to hard problems that specialists might miss.

For Harsh, being an early engineer means refusing to limit yourself to engineering. "Have a great amount of ownership for the product — own different verticals, be it design, product workflows, anything that can help your product and user experience better. In this whole journey we somehow naturally push our limits that we have been limiting ourselves to."

Late nights, launch videos, and the cosine curve of startup life

One of his favorite moments had nothing to do with code. Three people in a room, brainstorming the script for their first launch video, recording takes, spending the night editing and hiding jokes in the final cut. "There were lot of cuts that didn't make it in the final video but was fun."

Working directly with the founders means discussing product direction, roadmap, hiring, and sales — and also game nights and house parties. Harsh appreciates that Prashant and Gautam are open about their own mistakes, talking through what went wrong and how to avoid it next time. "This removes an anxiety, fear, impostor syndrome within me that what if I end up making a huge mistake in anything I am working on."

He describes the emotional arc of startup life as a cosine curve: weeks where everything feels stuck, then a breakthrough that sends a dopamine rush through the team. "You need to recall all your wins and have the faith in each other that you will iterate and come out better."

How Harsh evaluates a startup — and who should join one

When someone asks how to evaluate a startup before saying yes, Harsh has a clear hierarchy:

• Who is on the team? — the most important factor.
• What are we building?
• How much runway do we have?

Harsh sees himself starting a company of his own someday, and the founders actively mentor him toward that. But for now, the problem at Kalpa Labs is too exciting to leave.

If you're an engineer who thrives on small teams, isn't afraid to be clueless for a while, and wants to help build generalist audio models at the frontier — Kalpa Labs is hiring.