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On (Startup) Chile

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Re: On (Startup) Chile

#31

Post by tmatos »

I am from 2010 pilot group with Vendder project. Most teams will agree the reimbursement process is broken, time-consuming and painful.

I dare everybody here to push forward a type of investment, loan or subsidy that provides you 40.000USD with so little effort from your part without asking any share of your company in return.

Once again, and for the entire web to read, Startup Chile is a governamental grant/subsidy and should be considered as should, even if they have a so energetic staff who shoot fancy videos and write enjoyable blog posts. If you consider this you see Startup Chile deal is much sweeter than most government initiatives everywhere else.

A person should not compare apples and oranges.

Re: On (Startup) Chile

#32

Post by scottieb33 »

Yes there is red tape here but one of the things that doesn't come up much is the OPPORTUNITY. Who cares if the idea/start-up you came here with doesn't work, if you're willing to commit to being in Chile there is a lot of low hanging fruit. If you're willing to work hard and outcompete the competition (which is much easier here than in the States) you can be successful. I'll admit that our start-up, www.bungolow.com is not a "new" idea, but there are market opportunities here that we can't take advantage of in the US.

Re: On (Startup) Chile

#33

Post by herval »

nirvana wrote: post #29

We're preparing to move to Chile in February to start as part of the next class. I see a couple of these blog posts along the lines of "well my 6 months are up, I'm outta here!". That seems like such a tragedy to me. I've been to Chile before, Santiago is a wonderful city. We had only a few weeks in the country, but in that time we saw a little of the area and even went to Easter Island (which is part of Chile.) Ther…

Excellent ideas, although it would never stick with a government... (I proposed that myself ;))

Santiago is a GREAT city indeed (one of the best in latam), although a bit expensive (specially if u eat out a lot!)

Re: On (Startup) Chile

#34

Post by herval »

mguimaraes wrote: post #22

I came from the same country as Herval (Brazil) and I am flying to Chile on the 4th of January. Myself and my partner are working hard on bootstrapping our 2nd company for the last 1 1/2 year. We are very fortunate to have landed big contracts in Brazil this year. We will keep a commercial operation in Brazil. I can point out wonderful reasons to do business in Brazil: - Very large market, 200M people - Booming consu…

For brazilians in specific, there's a big plus for being on SUP: being "international" automatically doubles your perceived value in our dear xenophile country.

Although sny incubator would do the trick - even having a friend in Palo Alto and use his home address as "headquarters"

The ironic truth... ;)

Re: On (Startup) Chile

#35

Post by herval »

nirvana wrote: post #30
ew wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it stands I have little (actually zero) incentive to stay here after January. I'm distanced from my partners, friends, family, and investors who actually spend their money. I'm also not interested in spending 3 months, and a lot of money, incorporating a company here when I already did it in less than 24 hours back home in Canada.

Why would you need to incorporate in Chile in order to stay? The initial visa is for a year, right? I'm curious because we're planning to stay the full year, and may stay a second year if we can get a renewal.

The idea (at least we thought so) was to incentive us to stay. If everyone leaves, there's no ecosystem...

Re: On (Startup) Chile

#36

Post by skolk »

herval wrote: post #35
nirvana wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need to incorporate in Chile in order to stay? The initial visa is for a year, right? I'm curious because we're planning to stay the full year, and may stay a second year if we can get a renewal.

The idea (at least we thought so) was to incentive us to stay. If everyone leaves, there's no ecosystem...

and what is that incentive? there's no extended office space, mentor-ship, or support network, I was working with George on this, but we felt like it got slipped out beneath us when we tired :/ I agree with Herval that this could have be executed better, but more accurately that if these complaints don't exist the program will not improve (though many are extreme.. along with zac's comments :p )

Re: On (Startup) Chile

#37

Post by skolk »

tmatos wrote: post #31

I am from 2010 pilot group with Vendder project. Most teams will agree the reimbursement process is broken, time-consuming and painful. I dare everybody here to push forward a type of investment, loan or subsidy that provides you 40.000USD with so little effort from your part without asking any share of your company in return. Once again, and for the entire web to read, Startup Chile is a governamental grant/subsidy…

Is there a startup incubator/seed funding break down chart? It would really highlight some of the differences that all of these programs have- when starts up more or less (we did) blindly enter

Re: On (Startup) Chile

#38

Post by newyuppie »

herval wrote: post #35
nirvana wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need to incorporate in Chile in order to stay? The initial visa is for a year, right? I'm curious because we're planning to stay the full year, and may stay a second year if we can get a renewal.

The idea (at least we thought so) was to incentive us to stay. If everyone leaves, there's no ecosystem...

The incentive was to make Chile the Silicon Valley of Latam. The SUP vision is to "Convert Chile into the innovation and entrepreneurship hub of Latin America by attracting the world’s best and brightest entrepreneurs to bootstrap their startups in Chile."

Notice it doesn't say anything about people staying, just about people coming. Of course that if no one stays there is no ecosystem, but this is a work in progress. By attracting nerds, they got at least one part right (http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html).

The chicken/egg problem is that we can't find follow-on investment here, so we leave. But if we leave, no VC will want to be here to make follow-on investments. What should we do?

Re: On (Startup) Chile

#39

Post by Gaurav569 »

Hi. In am part of Round 1 of Entrepreneurs; For me, its been a great experience.

I can't believe can we be criticizing a free 40K grant, in exchange for no equity. (A few loose strings attached, so what?)

If there are better, more entrepreneur friendly grants available; why do we never hear of them? And why dont entreprenurs go there instead?

Re: On (Startup) Chile

#40

Post by chefsurfing »

Steve Blank says: Startup teams require a Hacker, a Hustler, a Designer and a Visionary. The title of this post could be "Make sure you bring your hustle to Startup Chile!". I know we will and I thank God every day for our little hustler :)
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