Great ideas rarely emerge from isolation

SPC 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.

south park commons community

OUR Members

A Modern Day Xerox PARC


We focus on highly technical builders in -1 to 0. Over the last decade, over 1,000 members have joined us to start companies, pursue research, and find their life's work.

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Sam
Sam did a PhD in Algebraic Combinatorics before working at Google and most recently Scale, where he built the incentive system.
Vivek
Vivek was the lead researcher behind Med-PaLM and Med-PaLM 2 at Google. Earlier, he worked at Facebook AI research on multimodal assistant systems.
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.
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.
Connor
Connor is the CEO, co-founder of Speak, an AI Speaking App that teaches users English. Prior to that, Connor created Flashcards+ which is an education app used by over 5 million students worldwide and eventually sold it to Chegg.
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.
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.
Sonia
Currently metalearning across multi-agent reinforcement learning, web 3, speculative science fiction, and multi-billion dollar bets... Twitter: @soniajoseph_
Temina
Currently exploring technologies that support human agency at Agency Fund. Joined SPC from machine learning startup Atlas AI. Co-founded and led the Center for Effective Global Action, a think tank focused on human and economic development.
Ashton
2x Olympic gold medalist in decathlon. Mechanical engineer. Nike R&D.

Our Spaces

About Member Residency

-1 to 0 isn’t a side project. It's a full time endeavor. Member residents spend 6 months at SPC ideating, validating new areas, finding collaborators, and building conviction in what they want to work on. Most are pursuing founding endeavors, but 30% are doing independent research or building outside the startup track entirely. We’ve had high-agency individuals of all kinds, from academic researchers to Olympians, join SPC to work alongside one another on new projects. Like any hard thing, it’s better done together.

Programming

Day to day programming includes peer accountability groups, learning forums, and workshops on the latest technological frontiers. We also facilitate roundtables and conversations with industry heavyweights such as Satya Nadella, Vinod Khosla, Fei-Fei Li, and more. The greatest value of the member residency is the community of talented peers it embeds you in. Figuring out where to dedicate the next stage of your life is best done in the most talent-dense environment possible. Our primary product is talent curation.

Residency vs. Fellowship

Member Residency and the Founder Fellowship are both paths to joining SPC. The Founder Fellowship supports technologists who know they want to start a company and are ready for funding to help. Member Residency is open to technologists who may or may not know they want to start a company and are not yet ready for funding. If you’re planning to fundraise soon, we may instead ask you to apply for our Founder Fellowship.

Next Steps

We accept new members on a rolling basis and will start processing your application whenever you apply. We go through every application and you’ll generally hear from us within 1-3 weeks. If we're moving forward, we'll invite you to an interview to learn more about you.