Rock Creek Commons

OUR FOUNDING THESIS

Before Washington became the capital, it was sustained by Rock Creek, a working artery for the city’s early life. In 1867, Major Nathaniel Michler envisioned Rock Creek as a “public resort” shaped by artistry and engineering (NPS History). By 1890, local advocacy had made that vision real, turning natural flow into public value (National Park Service).

Over time, Washington shifted from making things to making policy, and the “workshop” spirit faded. Today, the most powerful resource isn’t the creek. It’s the 300,000 students who pour into the DC–Maryland–Virginia (DMV) region each year. But the systems to turn that human energy into tangible creation have eroded.

The data is clear:

At Georgetown McDonough (undergrad), 60% of 2024 grads went into financial services and 14% into consulting (MSB Georgetown)
At the University of Maryland, only 0.5% of the Class of 2023 reported “starting a business” as their immediate path (UMD Graduation Survey)
At Johns Hopkins, the loss of $800M in federal funding in 2025 led to halving PhD admissions and cutting 2,000 jobs, forcing many students to leave their fields for safer career paths (Washington Post).

Students increasingly play it safe, guided by a DMV culture that prizes stability over experimentation. Brilliant minds, from policy analysts to lab researchers, rarely build in the sectors they came here to change. Many don’t see “founder” as a role for them, assuming it’s reserved for a Silicon Valley archetype. This leaves out students with deep expertise who could be tackling the region’s hardest problems using frontier technologies, but lack the relevant resources, haven’t met the right co-founder, or are too hesitant to try.

Rock Creek Commons exists to change that. We are a student-led, cross-university builder network in the DMV. We meet students where they are — pre-idea, pre-cofounder — and open the door to anyone who wants to create, whether or not they fit the tech-founder stereotype. We connect mission-driven students with the people, resources, and capital to turn early ideas into working prototypes, and to grow those prototypes into solutions across high-impact, high-growth sectors: global resilience and security, next-generation energy systems, biotechnology and health innovation, and other frontier technologies.

We do this through:

Community: A trusted, cross-campus network of builders and mentors
Programs: Events, build sprints, and problem-focused workshops
Support: Non-dilutive funding, data access, and expert guidance

As Ezra Klein writes in Abundance (2024), the bottleneck is no longer knowledge but “permission to try.” We give students that permission — and the tools to act on it. Because in an era when AI could automate half of entry-level tasks (Amodei, 2024), creation is the safest career path there is.

If the pages of your notebooks are filled with the seeds of ideas that you’ve never had the space to pursue, come plant them here.

The creek is flowing, and the commons are open.