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
0:45 — What Basement Studio actually is
6:30 — How Kid Super World got made
14:00 — Would you show it to your mom?
22:00 — 30 people in one Slack channel before anything ships
30:00 — The stack: Figma, Cursor, Next.js, Vercel
37:00 — XMP, Geist, and why they open-source everything
45:00 — How the lab becomes real products
54:00 — AI raises the bar
62:00 — Basement Ventures: from fund to VC
70:00 — Building a studio that outlasts its founders
