Great ideas rarely emerge from isolation

SPC 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 -1 to 0. Over the last decade, over 1,000 members have joined us to start companies, pursue research, and find their life's work.

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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.
Nikhil
Nikhil is a Director of AI Research at Salesforce. He is experienced in AI research and its applications in enterprise SaaS and bio-medicine. Before Salesforce Research, Nikhil obtained his PhD from MIT in AI and worked at Google, Microsoft, and Harvard.
Jie
Jie has been part of the OpenAI research team since 2016. He was previously an early engineer at Dropbox.
Jessica
Believer in people and cultivator of civic life, often using tech. Former lives: Cofounder & CEO/COO @ U.S. Digital Response; Fellow @ Code for America & Aspen Institute; local govvie; edtech builder. Field trip schemer, forever poet, persistent host.
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.
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.
Ola
Ola is a member of Technical Staff at OpenAI. Prior to that, he was an early engineer at Facebook and an active contributor to civic tech efforts through U.S. Digital Response.
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.
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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.