You only get a few shots at building your life’s work. The kind of work that makes a difference, that can’t happen without you. South Park Commons brings together talented people to share ideas, explore directions, and realize the opportunities that’ll get you there. We’ve created this environment to help you take risks and launch your next endeavor.
Before 2015, I had the opportunity to work at two rocket-ship-ride startups: Facebook & Dropbox. They were exhilarating, creating products that impacted millions, cultures built for innovation, and lifetime relationships.
Leaving felt like crash landing. I missed the adrenaline of building at the frontier, I missed the focus of a singular mission, but most of all I missed the camaraderie. So I set out to recreate it while figuring out my next project.
It started with 10 people around my dining table reading new AI papers. We were inspired by historical learning societies like Benjamin Franklin’s Junto Club and the Bloomsbury Group. Without knowing it, this group of early engineers from Facebook, Dropbox, and Stripe was solving -1 to 0. Our solution became South Park Commons.
- Ruchi Sanghvi, Founding Member
In 2016, we formalized as South Park Commons with a physical community space in the South Park neighborhood in San Francisco.
In 2018, we decided to raise a venture fund to ensure long-term financial sustainability and support companies started by members.
In 2020, we started the Founder Fellowship, a funded program for startup founders who are still building conviction in an idea.
In 2021, we opened our first expansion location in New York City.
In 2024, we opened our first location outside the US in Bengaluru, India.
-1 to 0 is the term we coined to describe the challenge SPC solves. It's the stage when you figure out what you want to dedicate the next 5-10 years of your life to building. It's also a philosophy of ideation—a commitment to taking the process of "figuring it out" as seriously as you take building whatever "it" turns out to be.
Great ideas don't emerge from isolation. We believe you are much more likely to discover something worth building in a dedicated cluster of people who share the same goal. The keys are talent density and curiosity. To set yourself up for success in -1 to 0, seek an environment where interruption and interrogation are features, not bugs.
Going from -1 to 0 is an act of worldbuilding. You're not just solving a near-term problem or building something people want right now. You're pulling some piece of the future into the present. From helping over 1000 members through the ambiguity of ideation and validation, we've developed a repeatable process for reaching conviction—and turning the illegible into the inevitable.
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