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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Jie
Jie has been part of the OpenAI research team since 2016. He was previously an early engineer at Dropbox.
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.
Jeremy
Currently: San Jose Earthquakes (ex: Portland Timbers). Pursuing off-field work ranging from early stage investing to nonprofit formation and leadership. Activating a diverse network through sport towards bringing innovative ideas & products to life.
Bilal
Bilal is the elected Supervisor for San Francisco’s District 5, representing neighborhoods including the Tenderloin, Haight-Ashbury, and Japantown. A former tech executive and nonprofit leader, he previously served as Head of Product at Amplitude and Executive Director at Electric Action. He’s also the founder of the 13 Fund, supporting equity and local journalism.
Yi
Yi is an assistant professor of statistics at UChicago. His research is in probability and applications to machine learning and high dimensional statistics.
Malcolm
Malcolm was the first employee at Asana and worked on many pieces of the infrastructure there. Before that he was on the Android team at Google and wrote much of the initial version of Gmail for Android.
Pete
Creator of Coinbase Wallet and Cipher Browser, and currently Engineering Lead for USDC. Advises projects across web3 including Polygon, Family, and Tribes. Ask ChatGPT
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
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.
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.

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.