

What Is Startup Chile And Why I’m Leaving Mexico   - j_camarena
http://jcamarena.com/english/what-is-startup-chile-and-why-im-leaving-mexico/

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pedalpete
I was accepted to Start-up Chile and arrived two weeks ago. You're in for a
great ride Julio.

My biggest concern when I first got accepted was the caliber of people which
would be attracted to the program. I hadn't seen any start-ups which had come
out of the program, and thought maybe the government was just hopping on the
incubator bandwagon.

Since arriving and meeting the entrepreneurs here, I've been very impressed.
Amazing projects, great people from around the world.

You'll have no regrets with your decision. Look forward to meeting you in
Chile. If you have any questions, drop me an email, the address is in my
profile.

~~~
j_camarena
Hey!, thanks for the comment .. actually im kinda afraid for the quality of
the people there.

Would be great to get a beer (or pisco (?)) there on Santiago :).

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byoung2
I hope governments around the world are reading this and taking note. When you
make it hard for your citizens to set up shop in your country, they are going
to go somewhere else where it is easier. And all of the jobs that they would
create, and money that they would pump into the local economy goes with them.
It is similar to what happened to the movie industry in Hollywood. When other
states and countries started offering tax breaks and streamlined permit
processing, big productions moved out of California.

~~~
binarray2000
A story of my friend from the time I've lived in Germany...posted to a
different topic but interesting nonetheless:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3224374>

~~~
byoung2
Thank you for sharing that story. Sounds like a very daunting process. When I
was in the Philippines last year, there was an initiative to create a new visa
that would grant permanent resident status to entrepreneurs who set up
businesses that employed 10 Filipinos. I wish more countries would adopt this
approach.

<http://www.visasphilippines.com/sveg>

~~~
binarray2000
Thanks for introducing Philippines to the discussion (in addition to Chile).
Both countries provide an example of how to attract entrepreneurs. And both
are emerging economies.

When I follow the discussion on "entrepreneurial immigration" in USA and in
Germany I see the same flawed logic: Everything's OK now, "we're on the top of
the world", "why risk letting people in, maybe there will be terrorists among
them"... Essentially, it's the policy of building higher walls and being, in
effect, repellent. But also not realizing that entrepreneurs are a rare breed.

Why do not intelligent people act differently? Why has the high civil servant
from my story let a pretty sure bet (my friend) leave the country?

Yes, it's the risk of being accused for letting a foreigner in but that is the
surface of the problem. Underneath is the hubris. "We don't need it, we've got
it all" mentality.

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syb
Hello everybody. My name is Joshua, I'm also mexican and just a year away to
finish my degree in computer science. I've also got my concerns about
entrepreneurship here in Mexico but willing to start something.

I'd like to know whether there's a place that all of us gather and discuss
such topics. I think Julio's thought about leaving Mexico for further support
and opportunity is something that has thrived amongst many of us young people
at some point in time. Personally, I'm just to decide what to do next, and I'm
inclined to keep myself here in Mexico and do some breakthrough work in the
education sector.

But as all of us knows, mistrust, corruption and legal/political/financial
obstacles weaken our will.

Concluding, I'd like us to keep in contact with each other, because for me,
trust is an issue and contributing to this discussion reflect the concern and
unbiased point of view (as many "bootstrappers" would like to seem, as Julio
mentioned).

My twitter is @syb_ and I'll be glad to keep in contact with all of you.

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mrpollo
While i respect your decision, I'm not really sure why you didn't stay in
Mexico, I think your article needs more details about what type of Help you
got from the Mexican Gov., and what was the difference in Chile what did they
offer?,

My big question would be, is it a totally different Market as you would
expected to be? if so, what did you had to change on your business strategy?

~~~
clsdaniel
Another Mexican giving its point of view here:

On human resources, the culture here is a job culture, you finish your career,
you get into a company, work 30-35 years and retire, that's what the community
expects of you. Starting a company is awkward, working in something without
payment or having immediate profits is a waste of time or foolish. But that is
changing with the crisis, everything goes now.

Getting people can be a bit difficult, most candidates I have interviewed had
little experience (if at all), with free software technologies we use and
demonstrated little will to learn (education tends to be centered on specific
technologies), most don't work well unsupervised, thus our remote working
experiment failed, they don't use modern development tools such as version
control, bug tracking and project management software, etc. That is a
generalization, of course there is brilliant people here too, but way more
difficult to find, hopefully if a startup community concentrates in a place
the skillful workforce will also concentrate there.

Government paperwork has always been abundant, complicated and time sink.

Taxes are not well leveled, either you are of low class (you have a small shop
"changarro/tiendita") and pay a low tax, or you are middle class, a
professional, you do consulting and give out receipts, your tax is relatively
low and simple (you may require an accountant to make sure you don't fall into
an obscure tax law and have problems), or finally you are the rich class, you
are a corporation, you pay high federal taxes, state taxes, enterprise taxes
(IETU), and retain value added tax (IVA, the equivalent of sale tax or VAT),
only this bracket you will be able to give out invoices (invoices are
centrally controlled by the government), which is a requirement when your
clients are companies.

Most startups (incorporated) and companies will fall in the top bracket, even
if you don't make millions, in other countries you are most likely to pay
taxes based on your yearly income.

Financing is thought, the problem is government financing which is very prone
to corruption, which means all those stimulus mostly go to friends, family and
the corporate backers of those in the government (some politicians promise
those stimulus to their backers beforehand in campaigns).

Finally, lets not get started with crime and violence, I live in a very
peaceful part of the country but I have still received 2 or 3 calls arguing
that they have a family member kidnapped, asking for money, a friend of mine
even got a visit of an extortionist asking for "piso" money.

I can understand well why Julio is leaving, I was tempted too to apply to
Startup Chile and start a new, but Mexico also has its key areas that are
unexploited on technology and will be great business in the near future.

~~~
mrpollo
I think one of the key aspects in Mexico is Culture, by definition Work is
where you are 8 hours a day, as you said finding someone that can manage its
time without supervision its nearly impossible, let alone completing a task. A
great point you mention is to gather around in a community and share our ideas
and knowledge, running a business in Mexico, specially a technology related
business can be overly complex.

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j_camarena
If anyone is interested i also have a Spanish version of this same post here:

[http://jcamarena.com/startups/que-es-startup-chile-y-por-
que...](http://jcamarena.com/startups/que-es-startup-chile-y-por-que-me-voy-
de-mexico/)

~~~
ajarmoniuk
And here are the comments from noticiashacker.com

[http://www.noticiashacker.com/noticia/julio-camarena-qu-
es-s...](http://www.noticiashacker.com/noticia/julio-camarena-qu-es-startup-
chile-y-porqu-me-voy-de-mxico)

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mvzink
This is cool. I would like to see more news from accepted Startup Chile
companies. Julio says there are lots of other benefits afforded by Chile, as
has been said elsewhere; I'd like to hear some firsthand anecdotes about these
benefits.

~~~
j_camarena
Subscribe to my blog and Embrace yourself; Startup Chile and open
recommendations post to my natal country are coming.

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fduran
Hola Julio, your blog link <http://www.blog.guali.com.mx/> is 403 right now.
Good luck in Chile.

~~~
j_camarena
Thanks for the info.. we are renaming our company blog to superpymes.com

That's why you got the error; i don't no lots of traffic there but i will be
done by today's night.

Anyway i removed the link on our company website, thanks again :).

