To Go 0 to 1, First Go -1 to 0

There is often an awkward stage before founding a company when you have a drive to build—but it can be difficult to know where to apply that energy. Ruchi Sanghvi is an expert at solving this problem. She founded and runs South Park Commons, one of the world’s premier communities for builders. I’ve always found the SPC team to be thoughtful and helpful, and this piece continues that trend. Read Ruchi’s piece to learn how to become the kind of person who can build a company of their own. —Evan

If you have ever discovered a word that describes something you knew but couldn’t express, you are familiar with the power of naming. Definition makes a thing more understandable, more tractable. It helps create best practices, repeatable processes, and benchmarks. It gives you language to communicate what you are doing and why it is worth doing well.

In the initial years after founding South Park Commons (SPC) in late 2015, I didn’t have language to explain the community’s purpose. What I used was the sequence of events leading to SPC’s founding. I had gone from rocket ship rides—as the first female engineer at Facebook, co-founder of productivity and collaboration software company Cove, and VP of operations at Dropbox after Cove’s acquisition—to… nothing. I wanted to start something new but didn’t have any direction beyond ambition. I felt unmoored. 

What would eventually become SPC was my answer to that experience. Like-minded, talented, technical peers gathered around my kitchen table to help each other through shared ambiguity. This is not an article about SPC, but about the problem it was built for—to help talented, ambitious technologists and founders figure out what's next. We now call this stage -1 to 0.

The squiggle between -1 and 0