South Park Commons is a community and fund for the '-1 to 0' stage — the pre-idea, pre-product, pre-revenue phase where exceptional technologists figure out what to build next. In SPC's own words, "Most companies don't fail because they run out of cash or can't find traction. They fail because they never picked the right idea in the first place." They invest in founders, not ideas: "Pre-idea investing is founder-centric investing. We are more interested in potential than we are in traction" — slope over intercept. If 0-to-1 is about Product-Market Fit, -1-to-0 is about Founder-Market Fit.
Evidence you have picked the RIGHT problem for YOU — founder-market fit, not just a plausible market gap. SPC believes companies fail by picking the wrong idea, so the problem must be one you'd allocate 5–10 years to, ideally a technical, 'illegible' opportunity others overlook.
“Most companies don't fail because they run out of cash or can't find traction. They fail because they never picked the right idea in the first place.” — Founder Fellowship — South Park Commons
“-1 to 0 is when you figure out what you want to work on next. It's when you decide where to allocate the next 5-10 years of your life.” — Ruchi Sanghvi
“If something seems obvious to you, it is probably obvious to others.” — Finn Meeks
Conviction in what you're building and why — a solution that fits the founder, not just the market. SPC prizes founder-market fit ('figure out what you want to build before you try to build it') and warns against substituting user opinions for your own vision.
“if 0 to 1 is about Product-Market Fit, -1 to 0 is about Founder-Market Fit. Figure out what you want to build before you try to build it.” — What is -1 to 0? A Philosophy of Ideation.
“If you fail to think beyond immediate feedback to the last thing you made, you run the risk of substituting user opinions for your own and getting stuck in a local maxima.” — Finn Meeks
“The actual idea is only 10% of it.” — Aditya Agarwal
A massive, often emerging or newly-online market opportunity — SPC is wary of products 100 users love with no larger market, and at later stages underwrites enormous TAM (e.g. India's underserved households, unorganized retail going digital).
“The market opportunity is massive and Meesho is riding the wave of unorganized retail rapidly coming online.” — Why SPC Invested in Meesho
“You might have built a product that 100 users love with no larger market opportunity, or found a market opening but not a potential product solution” — Ruchi Sanghvi
“a large opportunity for a financial services company that focuses on the 120M+ underserved LMC households in India” — Bala Chandrasekaran
Potential over traction — 'slope, not intercept.' SPC deliberately invests pre-traction and is suspicious of early proof, because a little proof can lure founders into a dead-end local maximum. What counts is real signal from users interacting with what you built, not vanity metrics.
“Pre-idea investing is founder-centric investing. We are more interested in potential than we are in traction.” — Founder Fellowship — South Park Commons
“The big danger is that a little proof is enough to lure you down a dead end.” — Ruchi Sanghvi
“Don't confuse coding with validation. Coding produces the structure of an experiment; people interacting with what you built produces the actual signal.” — Finn Meeks
Everything. SPC is explicitly founder-first: ambitious, high-agency, intensely curious technical builders who are uniquely insightful, resilient, independent first-principles thinkers. They back the person before the idea and bet that a great founder brings the numbers to life.
“It is ALL about the founder. The most important thing is the quality of the entrepreneur.” — In conversation with Aditya Agarwal — Included VC
“We instead look at someone's ambition, intellect, and drive, and then rely on the '-1 to 0' framework to get to positive outcomes.” — Aditya Agarwal
“greatness emerges when extreme talent density meets innate curiosity” — Aditya Agarwal
“If you apply as a solo founder, we have a strong bias for applicants who have the skills to build and prototype.” — SPC Founder Fellowship Fall 2025
At entry SPC is idea/model-agnostic, but at conviction (and in later-stage memos) they want a defensible model with a clear moat — proprietary data, network effects, or pricing power — and unit economics that improve with scale.
“Money View is able to analyze risk in the LMC at a higher granularity than traditional credit bureaus, so their data is far superior to what a traditional financial institution would use to evaluate loans.” — Why SPC Invested in Money View
“Meesho has strong moats (3PL pricing power due to utilization and supplier networks)” — Why SPC Invested in Meesho
“Meesho has a compelling point of view on how they are defensible against competitors” — Why SPC Invested in Meesho
Differentiation through being early and fast, and through structural defensibility. SPC's edge thesis is speed ('move fast or die'), and they look for a founder's own compelling point of view on why they win against incumbents — plus white space the big players ignore.
“This leaves a massive, lucrative space for founders to invent the actual interface.” — Entering the Post-Prompting World
“When you are racing against the clock of dwindling funding and competition out to kill your company, nothing will serve you better than a rapid product cycle.” — Aditya Agarwal
“The low-hanging fruit has been picked. We set founders up for category-creation, not digital co-option.” — Founder Fellowship — South Park Commons
A reason this is the moment — SPC sees -1 to 0 as the discipline of catching a wave early (e.g. unorganized retail coming online, the post-prompting AI shift) and of finding a global maximum before competitors do, rather than settling for a merely good idea because capital is cheap.
“We're entering the next era of AI: post-prompting.” — Entering the Post-Prompting World
“it's still relatively easy for founders to raise Seed money with a merely good idea, or with no idea at all.” — Ruchi Sanghvi
“The pre-training plateau forced a pivot. The current leap in agent capabilities is driven by reinforcement learning” — Ruchi Sanghvi
SPC's own structure sets the expectation: a clean, simple ask. Their Fellowship is $400k for 7% on a standard SAFE plus a guaranteed $600k in the next round. They partner pre-revenue and patiently, so the 'ask' is framed around what you need to reach founder-market fit, not a polished raise.
“$400k upfront for 7% on a standard SAFE, plus an additional $600k guaranteed in your next external funding round.” — SPC Founder Fellowship Fall 2025
“We look for founders exploring the most interesting, technical, illegible opportunities and back you with patient capital and bespoke support.” — SPC Founder Fellowship Fall 2025
“We help you reach Founder-Market Fit so you can get to Product-Market Fit.” — SPC Founder Fellowship Fall 2024
“-1 to 0 is when you figure out what you want to work on next. It's when you decide where to allocate the next 5-10 years of your life.”
“The actual idea is only 10% of it. I don't look at numbers or traction...I assess whether I love the entrepreneur and don't hate their idea, because a great founder will always be able to bring the numbers to life.”
“Don't confuse coding with validation. Coding produces the structure of an experiment; people interacting with what you built produces the actual signal.”