Great ideas rarely
emerge from isolation

SPC is a community of technologists ideating and validating what to build next. 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.

Tom
Tom

Previously led engineering for GPT-3 at OpenAI, now Co-founder of Anthropic.

Scott
Scott

3x IOI Gold Medalist, co-founded Lunchclub out of SPC, now Co-founder & CEO of Cognition.

Trisha
Trisha

Early engineer and PM at Affirm, now CEO of Unit21.

Kanjun
Kanjun

Chief of Staff at Dropbox, founding member of SPC, now Co-founder CEO of Imbue.

Howard
Howard

Product leader at Facebook, Pinterest. Founded Betty Labs, makers of consumer social apps for die-hard fans.

Bill
Bill

Chief System Engineer on the Dojo Supercomputer at Tesla, now Co-founder & CEO of Density AI.

Mac
Mac

Head of Autonomous Defense Systems at Anduril, now Founder & CEO of Vultron.

Chris
Chris

Co-founder and former CTO of Planet Labs, previously Space Mission Architect at NASA Ames.

Amit
Amit

Computer Vision Engineer at Apple, now CEO & Co-founder of Luma Labs.

Tom
Tom

Co-founder of the interpretability team at Deepmind, moved from London to join SPC, now Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Goodfire.

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.

About Member Residency

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.

Programming

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.

Residency vs. 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.

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