Suvam Deo

I spend a lot more time on PH at the moment to see what indepedent makers are spending their time on. I've noticed some patterns and also want to share a little bit about my journey at South Park Commons. Most startup stories begin at zero when there s already a team, an idea, maybe even a prototype. But at South Park Commons (SPC), the philosophy is different: people gather in the -1 to 0 stage. That liminal space where you don t yet know what you re building or even if you should build at all. It s a place for exploration, experimentation, and being brutally honest about what s working and what s not.

A hallmark of SPC is how often industry leaders drop by to share what they ve learned in the wild. Recently, I was in a small chat with Tyler Payne former Google and LinkedIn AI lead, startup builder, who has spent the last decade helping teams actually ship real-world ML systems. We're always talking about what's being launched at SPC.

By engagement, I mean upvotes, comments, shares basically anything that helps your product get to the top of the voting.

Do you have an overview of which tactics were most effective in this regard?

Common Sense Media published a report on this topic, and it reminded me of how big a bubble I live in.

When Meta announced back in 2024/2025 that they wanted to create AI avatars to boost engagement, I was skeptic, but data speaks clearly  young people enjoy AI interaction.