We believe great ideas rarely come about in isolation

South Park Commons is a community of builders, technologists, and domain-experts that challenge you, encourage you, and help you build and validate your ideas. People join us at every stage of their career: from just out of school to mid-career faculty, from first-time entrepreneur to serial founders with successful exits. We leverage our collective expertise to help our members discover new ways of impacting the world.

south park commons community

Members

Quality over quantity. 700+ members from over 150 professional and academic networks.

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Ang
I am a startup founder in artificial intelligence, with a variety of research and product experiences on autonomous driving, videos, cameras, maps, advertisements, etc. My research aims at building lifelong autonomous agents. Previously, I worked at Google DeepMind, Baidu Apollo, Facebook AI Research, CMU Robotics, Apple, Google Streetview, and Comcast Labs DC. I received my Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland College Park. My PhD thesis is spatial perception from visual and linguisitc information.
Rob
into film, computation, writing, social systems. previously founding engineer at substack, founding engineer at fin.com, early team / technical lead at venmo
Brandon
I’m the co-founder and CEO of Vori, a modern operating system for the grocery industry that is transforming the inventory management process for retailers and suppliers through user-friendly technology. Prior to Vori, I started Greo, a YC-backed startup that facilitated troll-free dialogue about social issues. Before that I worked at the White House and attended Stanford, where I was the student body Vice President.
Noah
Praveen
Praveen Chekuri is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Ascend, the first modern insurance payments platform that provides automated payments, financing, & payment operations. Previously he's worked at Hippo, Houseparty & Instacart.
Ben
Danny
Immunologist and data scientist building therapeutics that matter.
Sami
Creator of Echo Chess AI. I build strategy games using AI and Game Design.
Curtis
2020-12-10: • Working on: Electric Capital’s open source developer report (shipped this morning here), recruiting infrastructure for SPC. • Looking for: Nothing at the moment • Ask about: crypto, devtools, fundraising
Rob

Diversity of Expertise

A Modern Day Xerox Parc

Our members have a diversity of expertise. After their time at SPC, a third join academia, research organizations, and philanthropies.

south park community domain experts, founders, academics, operators, open source contributors, founding engineers, and more

Organizations domain experts join after SPC

anthropic logoaspen institutechan zuckerberg initiativegoogle aiopen philanthrophy projectgenerally intelligentopen aiuniversity of california, berkeley

Companies

Over 150 companies and non-profits founded that have raised more than $3.5B in capital.

Sector
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SPC Company Founders Sector Stage Founded Investors
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Company
Founders
Sector
Stage
Founded
Investors
Robert Leshner
Blockchain/Cryptocurrency
Unicorn
2018
Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures
Joe Percoco, Clayton Gardner, Max Bernardy
FinTech
Unicorn
2018
General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz
Jeff Arnold, Waseem Daher, Jessica McKellar
B2B SaaS
Unicorn
2016
Sequoia, Index Ventures, SV Angel
Yaniv Tal, Brandon Ramirez, Jannis Pohlman
Blockchain/Cryptocurrency
Unicorn
2018
Multicoin, Coinbase Ventures, Tiger Global
Vidit Aatrey, Sanjeev Barnwal
Consumer
Unicorn
2015
B Capital, Fidelity
Scott Wu, Steven Hao, Walden Yan
General Software
Unicorn
2024
Founders Fund
Abhishek Agarwal, Chris Park, Ryan Noon
B2B SaaS
Unicorn
2017
Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund
Christina Cacioppo
B2B SaaS
Unicorn
2017
Sequoia
Kanjun Qiu, Josh Albrecht
B2B SaaS
Unicorn
2021
Astera Institute
Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad, Emmett Nicholas
B2B SaaS
Unicorn
2013
Coatue, Thrive Capital, Benchmark

Forums

Community-led learning intensives on topics like AI, crypto, biotech, climate tech, the creator economy, and more.

Squads

Small weekly peer groups focused on either personal growth or building, with a focus on support, accountability, and creative exchange.

Speaker Series

Exclusive conversations with experts in tech, venture, science, politics, and more. Past speakers include Ben Thompson, Julia Galef, Reid Hoffman, Chris Dixon, Alfred Lin, Salman Khan, and Susan Desmond-Hellmann, among many others.

Collaborative Spaces

We have community spaces in the South Park neighborhood of San Francisco and the SoHo neighborhood in New York City to facilitate IRL connection and collaboration.

Community

50% of members find a co-founder or early collaborator within the community, many others get hired at SPC network organizations, and nearly all form deep relationships that persist long after graduation.

Speaker Series

Exclusive conversations with experts in tech, venture, science, politics, and more. Past speakers include Ben Thompson, Julia Galef, Reid Hoffman, Chris Dixon, Alfred Lin, Salman Khan, and Bruce Schneier, among many others.

Network

Access a network of domain experts in AI, Crypto, Fintech, etc., and founders and executives from seed stage to IPO companies such as Figma, Airtable, Pilot, SpaceX, and more.

Customers

Find early customers and beta testers within the community.

Fundraising

Raise funding from SPC Fund alongside a network of top funds and angels.

Credits

$200k in credits for cloud providers and most popular tools for startups.