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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Michael
Marcel
Marcel is the founder of Apache Impala, which he started when he joined Cloudera in 2011 and for which he was the architect/TL until 2017. Before Cloudera, he worked on database technology at Google and several startups. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
Akshay
Builder of robots and jockey of disks. Previously led AI/CV efforts @Peloton.
Chase
2x syn-bio founder with >$11M raised. Building AI scientists with frontier intelligence models (gpt-x) and combining them with cloud laboratories -- automated science facilities for remote experimentation -- to build self-driving systems for biology.
Jiayun
Lifelong learner and builder currently trying to accelerate building decarbonization. Studied CS and global health at Harvard and then built stuff in edtech and civic tech. Occasionally backpacks, trail runs, and flops around outside.
Yaser
Yaser built professional dashboard on Instagram and now exploring problems in AI and Healthcare
Aaron
Building crypto stealth co. Former: Partner, @lightspeedvp; Founder, @livingsocial
Andrew
Daanish
Born in Kashmir. Left at 16 to attend Stanford, where I had the good luck of learning from some of the world's great thinkers. Founded a hacker-artist collective and an edtech co. Now shaping my next adventure. Ping me about books or nn pretraining!
Luke
Researcher in persuasion & AI. PhD@MIT; Postdoc@Stanford; Co-founder Rhetorical Labs. I develop computational and experimental tools for discovering what changes people’s attitudes. I know about: RCTs, LLMs, expert forecasts and Bayesian models, advocacy.

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
Syam Palakurthy
Healthcare/Bio
Series B
2018
NextView, Haystack
Ben Brook, Mike Farrell
B2B SaaS
Series B
2018
Accel, Index Ventures, 01 Advisors
Jonny Dyer, Paul Day, Dan McCleese, Pascal Stang, Reuben Rohrschneider
B2B SaaS
Series B
2020
Costanoa, Radical Ventures
Feross Aboukhadijeh
B2B SaaS
Series B
2020
Andreessen Horowitz
Colin Sidoti, Braden Sidoti
B2B SaaS
Series B
2019
Andreessen Horowitz, Madrona Ventures, CRV
Alvaro Morales, Kshitij Grover
B2B SaaS
Series B
2021
Greylock, Menlo Ventures
Mohak Nahta
Consumer
Series B
2020
Andreessen Horowitz, Peak XV, Elevation Capital
Ian Lee, Will Papper
Blockchain/Cryptocurrency
Series B
2021
Andreessen Horowitz
Deborah Hanus
Human Capital
Series A
2018
WndrCo, Authentic Ventures
Seth Forsgren, Hayk Martiros
Consumer
Series A
2023
Felicis Ventures, Spark Capital

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.