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.

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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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.
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.
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.
Nishant
Co-founded Color (color.com), left in early 2020. Currently investing in companies at the intersection of biology + engineering.
Jie
Jie has been part of the OpenAI research team since 2016. He was previously an early engineer at Dropbox.
Yi
Yi is an assistant professor of statistics at UChicago. His research is in probability and applications to machine learning and high dimensional statistics.
Antonio
Built some stuff (YC, Facebook, Branch, etc.), wrote some stuff ('Chaos Monkeys'). Currently building Spindl.xyz.
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.
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.
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.

Our Spaces

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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