Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students

BASES is one of the largest student entrepreneurship organizations in the United States. This non-profit, student-run organization was founded in 1996 by a group of five Stanford University engineering students. They looked to gain top-level business advice and experience from industry leaders in the high-tech world, including high-profile CEOs, engineers, and prominent venture capitalists. Chartered with cultivating the next generation of entrepreneurs, these students received valuable insight as they developed their own business ventures and entered the working world.

Today, BASES has evolved to include undergraduate and graduate students along with faculty members from all schools at Stanford, including Business, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Humanities and Science. BASES strives to help strengthen entrepreneurship collaboration at Stanford by working with a variety of student groups across campus.

BASES is one of the largest professional groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has more than 5,000 members, half of whom represent about 15 percent of the Stanford population. The other half resides outside of Stanford, comprised mainly of alumni, entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists, and others interested in entrepreneurship.

BASES members are challenged with crucial issues that companies face today. The organization facilitates an environment for exchange of entrepreneurial ideas and aims at connecting capable students with experienced representatives from industry. BASES hosts a wide range of educational and motivational programs to help provide Stanford students with employment resources, business plan development assistance, and company start-up seminars.

BASES has helped create a number of innovative and successful companies over the last few years, such as LightBit, Ingenuity, della.com, Gigabeat, Message Bay, Pandao, Penguin Computing, T-RAM, Scalable Life, Xagros, Epitrope, and Voltage Security (formerly IdentiCrypt).

BASES sponsors are drawn from each part of the entrepreneurship value chain, including venture capital firms, law firms, start-ups, foundations, consulting firms, investment banks and academia. Organizations that have been involved with BASES and its commitment to developing the next-generation of entrepreneurs include Morgenthaler Ventures, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Accel Partners, Atlas Ventures, Google, Goldman Sachs, and Silicon Valley Bank among many others.