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Start-Up Chile is OK. Nothing more.

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Re: Start-Up Chile is OK. Nothing more.

#31

Post by amix »

I don't agree with her list of companies that should apply to Startup Chile. For example, Startup Chile is great for bootstrapping companies. You get 6 months and $40.000 USD to test out your idea. You visit an amazing country and another culture. You can learn another language. Startup Chile is a great choice for people that are ready to make the jump from a boring job to starting their own thing.

And even if you are experienced doing startups it's still awesome to visit another culture and see how things work in another place. Maybe you won't like it that much, but at least you experienced it.

What Startup Chile isn't good at is creating companies that need VC funding or Silicon Valley connections. If your startup needs these things then don't look for it in Chile or anywhere else... because you won't find it here or anywhere else.

Re: Start-Up Chile is OK. Nothing more.

#32

Post by nirvana »

jot wrote: post #23
nico wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know that there were mentors who were not experienced entrepreneurs. I have several (very successful and experienced entrepreneurs) friends, who are mentors for Startup Chile participants. They've advised these companies, hooked them up with important contacts for their businesses and even provided office space. I guess I generalized that to the whole mentorship system.

I guess it's luck of the draw. I don't envy Start-Up Chile's task of trying to find experienced mentors in Chile with time for 300 startups a year.

I think nico is talking about a CORFO program that I've only barely heard mention as a Startup Chile participant (someone else mentioned getting mentorship thru it, but I've never seen anything from Startup Chile on how we could participate).... while jot is talking about the padrino program.

So, two different groups of people.

Re: Start-Up Chile is OK. Nothing more.

#33

Post by heretohelp »

amix wrote: post #30
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

I like the idea of Startup Chile. After reading this article, I still like most of it, except for trust issues. I'm not in favor of video surveillance, but if I ran Startup Chile, I'd be adding some cameras all over the place. Maybe go to a badge system for building access and egress. Not being safe enough to leave your gear on the desk while you go to lunch or something is a big red flag that something's wrong. You…

I had my laptop stolen at the Startup Chile office and the Startup Chile team helped me get it back because of surveillance cameras. I am the only person this has happened to (at least from what I know). I think you can get things stolen in any co-work environment and there is no way Startup Chile can control this (other than doing what they already do). If you are uncomfortable with the security aspect you can get a…

>. I think you can get things stolen in any co-work environment and there is no way Startup Chile can control this (other than doing what they already do).

Sorta? My company incubated at StartX and we thought nothing of leaving our stuff on our desks while we left to do other things. The thought of having our things stolen was just unrealistic.

Re: Start-Up Chile is OK. Nothing more.

#34

Post by arnoldoMuller »

Kilimanjaro wrote: post #17

I went to Japan 20 yrs ago on a scholarship and the moment I set foot on the campus I was handed an ATM card with ¥100k ready to use (~$1k), auto refillable every month. I love Japan.

I went as a Monbusho scholar in the period 2004 - 2009 and this is not the case anymore. Nowadays you spend a lot of time filling forms and getting access to basic services like cellphones or Internet. They do give you around ¥160K these days...

Re: Start-Up Chile is OK. Nothing more.

#35

Post by jkaljundi »

ashray wrote: post #27
jkaljundi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, in many countries bureaucracy is not part of doing business. Especially in Estonia where setting up a company or doing anything with the government public services, taxes, reporting etc takes a few minutes online and is never done on paper.

Yes, but when you start something in Chile you can't expect it to be like Estonia or elsewhere. ;)

Why not?

Re: Start-Up Chile is OK. Nothing more.

#36

Post by pawelwentpawel »

amix wrote: post #30
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

I like the idea of Startup Chile. After reading this article, I still like most of it, except for trust issues. I'm not in favor of video surveillance, but if I ran Startup Chile, I'd be adding some cameras all over the place. Maybe go to a badge system for building access and egress. Not being safe enough to leave your gear on the desk while you go to lunch or something is a big red flag that something's wrong. You…

I had my laptop stolen at the Startup Chile office and the Startup Chile team helped me get it back because of surveillance cameras. I am the only person this has happened to (at least from what I know). I think you can get things stolen in any co-work environment and there is no way Startup Chile can control this (other than doing what they already do). If you are uncomfortable with the security aspect you can get a…

The office spaces don’t have decent lighting and it’s not safe - you can’t leave your stuff on the table even for 5 minutes, a lot of it might get stolen - This sounds kind of crazy to be honest. As I'm front some deep places in eastern europe I wouldn't leave any of my stuff in any places. Especially considering the fact that the work on the laptop is probably more valuable than the machine itself. But this is a shared office space. You just wouldn't expect something like that to happen. And from my point of view - Startup Chile team helped me get it back - is not really much of an excuse. Did they just leave the door open? Or were the participants of the program just nicking stuff from each other?

Re: Start-Up Chile is OK. Nothing more.

#40

Post by liispeet »

pawelwentpawel wrote: post #37

Thanks for a nice post. However, I'm still wondering about the networking part of this program. Where were most of the participants from? Was it Latin America? Also, were there any interesting people to connect with from Europe/US?

Most of the people were actually from the U.S. (if I remember the stats correctly), many people from Europe, also from Latin America, but not many locals inside the program compared to the others. There's a lot of interesting people for sure! From all around the world!
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