The Basement

The Basement is an on-campus incubator and accelerator at the University of California San Diego. The Basement provides participants in its program with co-working space, a mentorship program, and resources for the wider community. The Basement was launched in 2015 with support from former graduates in venture capital, including Jeff and Kim Belk, Aryeh Bourkoff, and Mark Suster. With support from the community, The Basement works to help students build companies and social innovation ventures capable of becoming part of the larger San Diego community and creating jobs in the community. The program is industry and technology agnostic.

The following are companies previously associated with The Basement and related programs:

• Altum
• Atutu
• Craitor
• EsproBar
• FreeGen Technologies
• Khepra
• Mercury Health
• Nimber
• Pixals
• Vericrypt
• Yomp

The Basement's Blackstone LaunchPad is open to undergraduate and graduate students of UC San Diego with entrepreneurial or social impact interests, which the program works to develop. The program has Fall, Winter, and Spring Cohorts, each with different programs designed to develop different skills for the participants and different parts of their prospective businesses.

The Latinx Leadership Program is offered by the The Basement in a year-long pilot with priority given to trans/nonbinary/women-identifying Latinx folks. The goal of the program is to empower participants with leadership skills and entrepreneurial experiences through mini-practicums and summer internships. The benefits of the program include a small community, with each cohort limited to twenty students; tailored curriculums; personal coaches; practicum with Startup San Diego; paid summer internship; exposure to entrepreneurial mindset; and credits towards a participants program.

The Innovation Sprints is designed to bring teams of students through the initial stages of developing solutions to problems and develop an innovative entrepreneurial idea with collaboration from students across disciplines, using their problem-solving and educational skills to develop those solutions. The benefits of the program include access to resources; direct work and experience in a selection of challenges with community partners, including City of San Diego, SANDAG, the San Diego Zoo, and the San Diego International Airport, among others; mentorship programs; a curriculum designed for early to mid-stage founders or founding teams; and credits towards participants programs.

The Biomimicry Global Design Challenge is a program designed in partnership with UC San Diego's Biomimicry Institute to provide an opportunity for students to learn biomimicry and participate in the Biomimicry Design Challenge. The challenge changes each year and is typically based on solving complex challenges in the interaction of humans and nature, such as energy, food, resources, and materials, and to create regenerative solutions. The challenge for 2021 was to create a nature-inspired innovation (a product, a service, or a system) that aligns with one or more of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations while incorporating all three essential elements of biomimicry.

The Converge Incubator program is open to all undergraduate and graduate students at UC San Diego seeking to identify, develop, and validate the commercial potential of an idea. The program is a five-week experience that includes twelve hours per week of programming, which includes weekly group meetings, weekly workshops, mentor office hours, and community engagement. The program also offers participants with access to experienced entrepreneurs, advisers, and investors, with focus areas in customer discovery, strategic planning, product and market fit, branding and communication, and storytelling. Other benefits include a living stipend to eligible members, access to entrepreneurial tools, and one-on-one mentorship.