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
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.
Howard
Howard founded Betty Labs, makers of consumer social apps for die-hard fans, later acquired by Spotify. Prior to that he led product teams at Facebook and Pinterest.
Nishant
Co-founded Color (color.com), left in early 2020. Currently investing in companies at the intersection of biology + engineering.
Jeff
Jeff is the co-founder and former COO of Pilot.com. Prior to Pilot, he led operations at OpenAI and founded Zulip (acquired by Dropbox), where he later led product for client and platform teams.
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.
Caroline
Caroline is the COO of Luma AI, helping people create through Dream Machine’s generative video technology. Previously co-founder and CEO of Leap and former CEO of Toca Boca, one of the most downloaded kids’ apps globally.
Avichal
Vishal
Vishal is the co-founder and former CTO of Leap, building products to address loneliness among older adults. Previously co-founded Screenhero (acquired by Slack), where he later led real-time communications as a Senior Engineering Manager.
Jonny
Jonny is the CEO of Muon Space, leading a team building climate-focused satellite technology. Previously held senior engineering roles at Lyft (Level 5 autonomy), Google, and Terra Bella (formerly Skybox Imaging), where he led the design and launch of multiple Earth observation satellites.
Yev
Grew up in SF, worked in software startups since I was in high school from developer tools to fighting crime. Now, I’m fixing data on the web

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