Start-Up Chile is OK. Nothing more.

Very well said. I particularly agree with the list describing the kinds of companies that can get the most out of Start-Up Chile.

It's critical that participants have the right expectations but Start-Up Chile create a huge amount of marketing fluff which seems to get in the way of that. Now they have had well over 300 participants I hope they start focusing on communicating success stories (there are a few) and the learnings (there are loads) rather than "the dream" and "the vision". Enough interesting things happened over the last 18 months that they shouldn't really need to use old school marketing techniques any more.

I previously commented about my recommended set of Start-Up Chile expectations here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3811445

The main Startup Chile drawbacks are:

- they don't invest on you, instead they give you access to a grant

- there are no real investors backing the program

- there are no real entrepreneurs backing the program

- they don't know anything about technology

- nobody is thinking about getting rich except the entrepreneurs joining the program.

EDIT: Well actually there are local entrepreneurs too.

Thanks for the write-up - really good to see more experiences of the programme.

We were offered a space to be in the same batch as you, but we kind of realised this would be the case before going. Whilst the money was attractive, the admin, the inflexibility on the length of the programme, and the fact it would be a distraction to actually launching our product meant we just stayed bootstrapped working from home.

Notably, the fact they don't give you the money up-front shows that they're not investing in your company (and that they have no interest in equity). You are going to be made to work for that cash - and that work is time not spent on your startup.

I'm confident we launched quicker this way - whether we would have made a killer connection to make or break our company through the programme, I guess we will never know! But it does seem unlikely from your review and the others that have gone before it.

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 think the post author is right in the sense that Startup Chile is not for everybody, but I also think she was expecting everything to be provided to her as part of the program. I believe there are some good criticisms, like the one about office security (although, you should really get your own office, that's what the money is for), but most of it seems like unmatched expectations (she was expecting the same experience she and other members of her team had at american startup accelerators, and like she says, Startup Chile is not an accelerator/incubation program).

She also talks about not having access to mentors, and I know that is not completely accurate. Startup Chile has a mentorship system (godfather/godsons) in which experienced entrepreneurs help the teams participating in the program.

I was there for Demo Day too, there were two rooms with presentations. And even though they had some pretty bad technical issues at the room I was in, the whole thing there was in English (I can't say anything about the other room).

I hope that in spite of her disappointments, she had a good experience and that Startup Chile keeps improving in the future.