play episode
Podcast
S1
E16
34 mins
Apr 8, 2026
Basement Studio: This Design Agency Is Becoming a VC
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Facundo Santana and José Rago run Basement Studio — 35 people in Argentina, working with Vercel, Mr. Beast, and Kid Super.
They poured actual wine on a surface to get a WebGL texture right. That detail tells you everything about how this shop operates.
This conversation covers how they protect quality as they scale, the R&D lab that spun out BasHub and XMP, why they open-source everything, how 30 people pile into a single Slack channel before anything ships, and why Basement Ventures is quietly becoming a real VC fund.
LINKS
Basement Studio: https://basement.studio
Facundo on X: https://x.com/falanfantana
José on X: https://x.com/ragojose
Chapters
0:00 — They used actual wine to build a website
0:24 — Who is Basement Studio?
1:36 — From a Buenos Aires apartment to 35 people
5:17 — The Kid Super World project
7:19 — Would you show it to your mom?
9:49 — Working with Vercel on Geist and v0
13:20 — How 30 people review work in one Slack channel
16:05 — Open source: BasHub, XMP, and giving back
18:06 — The lab that becomes real products
21:32 — How AI is changing creative studios
24:49 — Basement Ventures: from studio to microfund
28:43 — Investing in the tools you actually use
31:14 — Building a studio that outlasts its founders
