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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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.
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.
Soleio
Software designer turned investor. Led early design at Facebook, Messenger, then Dropbox. Now investing in extraordinary software startups and helping them win through great design. Proud backer of Figma, Vercel, Universe, Vanta, Cambly, Synthesia, Pulley, Framer, and many more around the globe. Early stage capitalism. Wonder junkie. 🃏
Sam
Sam did a PhD in Algebraic Combinatorics before working at Google and most recently Scale, where he built the incentive system.
Avichal
Avichal is an entrepreneur and investor. He currently invests out of Electric Capital, a web3-focused fund that he co-founded. He previously worked at Facebook and founded several startups.
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
Ashton
2x Olympic gold medalist in decathlon from London 2012 and Rio 2016. Studying mechanical engineering to work on energy or space. Education and human performance important too.
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.
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.
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.

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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