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.

See More
Marco
Marco began his career in academia, earning a PhD in CS at ETH Zurich before moving to Berkeley for his postdoc. From there, he became an early engineer at Pure Storage and other startups before transitioning into engineering leadership, most recently serving as VP of Engineering at Robust Intelligence. He also spent time working on incubations with Sutter Hill Ventures, giving him deep experience across the entire company-building lifecycle, from ideation to scale.
Harshvardhan
Hey, you can call me Harsh! Founder of Metarch (metarch.ai) & Manifold Research (manifoldrg.com). Previously, AI Research Scientist & Faculty @ Georgia Tech, Peraton/Perspecta Labs, Paperspace ATG, Harvard My aim is to research, build, and commercialize high leverage science and technology to advance human civilization, starting with Next Generation AI.
Brandon
Co-founder of Power, building a network for medical research. Previously led revenue and operations at Setter (acquired by Thumbtack) and later helped integrate the teams as Head of BizOps at Thumbtack.
Dhawal
Successful entrepreneur with background in eCommerce, AR, & Ad-Tech. Previously, I co-founded a venture backed startup that resulted in a successful exit to Walmart. I can help on go-to-market plans as well as product-market fit problems
Michael
Michael Lai's six word story is “failed professional athlete, striving education entrepreneur.” He is currently building Tinycare, a network of micro daycares aiming to fix the childcare crisis. Previously, he built Promise, a nonprofit venture studio for early childhood development, Minerva Project, Google.org, and competed on Harvard's varsity golf team (where he was decidedly NOT the next Tiger Woods). His passion for education starts from the classroom — 6 years volunteer teaching preschool, elementary, and middle school.
Arun
2x Founder SmartPhones, Fintech, AI Samsung, Startups, Govt, Non-Profits
Brian
Brian is a software engineer at Stainless, previously at Anthropic where he helped launch Claude.ai and unify API infrastructure. He previously co-founded Kenchi and led key product lines at Stripe, including Stripe Connect.
Sambhav
SPG@Affirm; avid squash player
Michael
I spent four years enlisted in the Navy, where I worked as a mechanic on F-18s. After the Navy, I attended Harvard and graduated in 2024 with a degree in physics and math. I'm now working on LLM safety and interpretability at TAPP Security.
Tom
ex-DeepMind researcher interested in interpretability, data curation & foundation models (especially in new domains)

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.

google ai