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.

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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.

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Marcel
Marcel is the founder of Apache Impala, which he started when he joined Cloudera in 2011 and for which he was the architect/TL until 2017. Before Cloudera, he worked on database technology at Google and several startups. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
Justin
Justin most recently led Growth at Rockset, and worked on Google's Cloud Security team prior. He was also the Founder/CEO of Xenia Gifts. Justin graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in Computer Science and Business Administration.
Phil
Co-founder of Baseten, building infrastructure to deploy and serve machine learning models in production. Previously co-founded Shape (acquired by Reflektive) and worked on ML at Gumroad. Holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Sydney.
Christian
deep tech designer
Anil
Engineering leader and 2x founder; CS at UT Austin. Past experience at Cisco and Apple. Led teams developing media and ML platforms, including on-device infrastructure and optimizations for running Apple Intelligence language & vision models.
Hanson
Hanson is a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI, where he is an early member of the Codex team. Previously co-founded Arcwise, a low-code ML and analytics platform, and led ML infrastructure at Meta, where he built internal systems supporting millions of QPS.
Erin
Erin Cafaro is a two-time Olympic gold medalist in rowing, winning with the U.S. women’s eight team at the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Games. She is one of the most decorated rowers in U.S. history.
Deanna
Deanna leads Customer Marketing at Writer. Previously, she was head of Product Marketing at Stripe and VP of Marketing at Wealthfront.
Amit
Co-founder of Luma AI, building cutting-edge tools at the intersection of computer vision and 3D content. Previously led camera and systems engineering at Apple.
Noah
Noah is an applied AI lead at OpenAI, focused on turning frontier models into real-world impact. Previously co-founded Eureka and led product at Forward after starting out as a software engineer. Former South Park Commons fellow.

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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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South Park Commons
380 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA
© 2025 All rights reserved.
South Park Commons
380 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA
© 2022 All rights reserved.