Great ideas rarely emerge from isolation

South Park Commons is a community of technologists ideating and validating what to build next. We believe this shouldn’t be done alone. Our members range from exited founders and highly-cited researchers to new graduates and first-time entrepreneurs. What unites us is ambition, ability, and a mutual commitment to helping each other navigate -1 to 0.

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south park commons community

OUR Members

A Modern Day Xerox PARC


We focus on highly technical builders in the -1 to 0. Over the last decade, we have had 1,000 members join us to start companies, pursue research, and work on other ambitious projects.

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Jie
Jie has been part of the OpenAI research team since 2016. He was previously an early engineer at Dropbox.
John
ML leader with experience in recommendations and humans-in-the-loop. Alum of Square and Stitch Fix. Here to learn and explore by doing. Currently fascinated by LLMs. "The future is already here—it's just not evenly distributed [yet]." –Neil Stephenson
Nikhil
Nikhil is a Director of AI Research at Salesforce. He is experienced in AI research and its applications in enterprise SaaS and bio-medicine. Before Salesforce Research, Nikhil obtained his PhD from MIT in AI and worked at Google, Microsoft, and Harvard.
Ola
Ola is a member of Technical Staff at OpenAI. Prior to that, he was an early engineer at Facebook and an active contributor to civic tech efforts through U.S. Digital Response.
Chris
Co-founder and former CTO of Planet Labs, where he led spacecraft and constellation design for one of the world’s largest Earth imaging networks. Previously a Space Mission Architect at NASA Ames, where he developed low-cost spacecraft and led commercialization efforts including the Phonesat Project.
Jessica
Believer in people and cultivator of civic life, often using tech. Former lives: Cofounder & CEO/COO @ U.S. Digital Response; Fellow @ Code for America & Aspen Institute; local govvie; edtech builder. Field trip schemer, forever poet, persistent host.
Andrew
Andrew is the co-founder and CTO of Speak, building technology to reinvent how people learn, starting with language. He's former Thiel Fellow and Stanford PhD dropout in neuroscience and bioengineering.
Tido
Tido is a co-founder at Koala. Prior to that, he was Chief Product Officer (overseeing eng, product, design, and security) at Segment. Before that, software engineer @ Dropbox and Facebook.
Howard
Howard founded Betty Labs, makers of consumer social apps for die-hard fans, later acquired by Spotify. Prior to that he led product teams at Facebook and Pinterest.
Tim
Founder and CEO of Zulip, a powerful team chat platform for distributed engineering teams. Previously co-founded Ksplice (acquired by Oracle) and led major infrastructure projects at Dropbox. MIT-trained engineer with deep expertise in building robust, developer-centric systems.

Our Spaces

San Francisco
New York
Bengaluru

What our members do


Our members have started 250+ companies, including several unicorns. Others have become core contributors to leading research organizations, open-source software projects, and academic institutions.

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South Park Commons
380 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA
© 2025 All rights reserved.
South Park Commons
380 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA
© 2022 All rights reserved.