The SPC-Script web3 Founder Fellowship application is now closed. Follow us on Twitter for news about future cohorts!

South Park Commons is a community designed to help talented builders and technologists get from -1 to 0. Since our founding in 2015, over 450 members have joined us to explore new ideas and figure out what they want to dedicate their life to next. In early 2021, we collected what we learned from these incredible members and started the Founder Fellowship. The concept is simple: give each of 10–12 teams in a cohort $400k in funding before they have settled on an idea, then provide them with a curriculum, mentorship, and community to help launch a venture-scale business. We doubled down in August when we welcomed our second cohort.

The model is working. Over half of the first cohort has already raised a new round. The collective valuation of all Founder Fellowship companies, less than a year after the program’s launch, is over half a billion dollars.

Now we’ve opened applications for a third cohort. But this time, we’re partnering with Evan Tana and AJ Solimine from Script Capital, Mike Vernal from Sequoia, Li Jin from Variant Fund, Dylan Field from Figma, Multicoin Capital, Syndicate, and a host of other all-star contributors — and going all-in on web3.

Why web3? We’re following the SPC community’s lead here. Our founding member, Ruchi Sanghvi, put it best:

“Enthusiasm among builders is a powerful signal. It helps parse hype and opportunity. Talented developers are especially well-tuned to opportunity costs. Their attention is a useful proxy for substance.”

We are at an inflection point in how people own and use their data, transact with others, and integrate new incentives in distributed products. The upswell of attention paid to web3 projects in the SPC community validated the increasing gravity of the crypto ecosystem.

We firmly believe our approach with previous cohorts will prove effective with one focused on web3, but we are also making some modifications to better tailor the program. Most notably, Founder Fellowship cohort three will be a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), powered by Syndicate. The DAO will be the investment entity, and all teams, contributing partners, and guest advisors will be members. Fellows will also become members of the SPC Community.

Running the cohort as a DAO offers three distinct benefits:

We’ve assembled an all-star brain trust to support this cohort. Mike Vernal will join SPC Fund and Script Capital partners as a team mentor, while Dylan Field, Li Jin, and Multicoin Capital will join us as contributing partners, lending their varied and deep expertise to the group. We also have a host of web3 experts like Will Papper (cofounder of Syndicate) and Roneil Rumburg (cofounder of Audius) as DAO contributors. These incredible builders, entrepreneurs, and product experts will join us for exclusive talks, workshops, and events.

We are so excited to work with these remarkable partners to make the Founder Fellowship the best place to explore web3. We’re even more excited to meet the cohort of founders. If you are passionate about building a web3 product or community, whether or not you have built in the space before, we encourage you to apply!

SPC’s Founder Fellowship is a different way for entrepreneurs to start a high growth, venture-backable startup. We give founders their first outside investment, help them ideate and iterate to a viable product, and assist them in raising from the best VCs in the world. This particular cohort is for founders who want to build web3 companies.

We take a boutique and customized approach to helping founders, recognizing that a one-size-fits-all approach to starting companies rarely works. Our cohort sizes are small, with one partner for every two companies. We do not have a demo day, and when the time is right for you to raise, we’ll make introductions to the best investors. We do not force strict timelines.

We offer $400,000 to founders to pursue an idea, in exchange for 7% equity via a SAFE with a Token Warrant. We can help identify the right market, support you as you build your first product, find first customers, help raise a seed round, and even help find co-founders.

Fellows receive:

We help at the -1 to 0 phase, even before a founder has an idea.

The DAO will be the investment entity investing in each team. DAO participants, which includes non-investing cohort fellows and program contributors, will be issued tokens representing ownership in the entire cohort. Tokens for non-investing fellows and contributors issued by the DAO will be accounted for in the 7% and will not require additional dilution of equity.

You do not need an idea to apply.

That being said, a great idea is a critical component of long term success. If you do not have an idea, we will need to assess your ability to generate great ideas. Be prepared to discuss markets you find interesting, previous ideas you have considered and discarded, and the sorts of startup ideas and insights you find compelling and why.

No! We welcome people new to web3, but we do expect you to be able to discuss why you want to build a web3 product.

We do accept solo founders, though we generally have a preference for teams. It can be challenging to start a company solo, and we hear from our fellows that having a collaborator is extremely valuable on this journey. If you’re a solo founder, we have a strong bias towards applicants who have the skills to build and prototype. If you are accepted as a solo founder but still want a co-founder, we can help in the search process — several of our first cohort fellows found co-founders in the SPC community.

The web3 Founder Fellowship is jointly-organized by South Park Commons and Script Capital, and run by SPC investors Ruchi Sanghvi, Aditya Agarwal, Finn Meeks, and Bala Chandrasekaran; Script Capital partners Evan Tana and AJ Solimine; and Mike Vernal from Sequoia Capital. We are builders, entrepreneurs, technologists, and investors who love helping other entrepreneurs succeed.

South Park Commons is a member-run community of technologists and builders dedicated to helping each other get from -1 to 0.