

Why you should apply to Startup Chile (from a Round 4 entrepreneur) - etagwerker
http://clairepelletreau.com/post/44728640153/best-reason-to-apply-startup-chile

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pedalpete
I'm a round 2 Startup Chile participant, and I'm surprised to say, I agree
with most of this post, except their is a glaring exception. If you are in any
half-decent start-up ecosystem (I'm now in Sydney, Australia) all the
feedback, knowledge sharing, etc, etc is still available to you.

Therefore, that 'value' isn't unique to Startup Chile, and unless you live in
a non-technology area (which I did before Startup Chile), is not reason enough
to go.

~~~
etagwerker
I am a round 4 participant and I went from Buenos Aires. I consider BA to have
a decent startup ecosystem, but it doesn't have an entity that gathers
entrepreneurs and encourages them to meet and share their experiences.

BA doesn't have a "Startup Chile" in its environment. It does have one or two
incubators/accelerators but they are very selective in who gets to participate
or not.

I believe the kind of synergy and energy that happens in Startup Chile can
only happen in other accelerators/incubators like Y Combinator, Tech Stars, et
al; or in co-working spaces that encourage meetings/networking.

The other reason to go, and probably the most important one, is that you get
$40,000 equity-free.

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feralmoan
I'm seriously considering it, but it sounds hard to get paid. Is this the
case, and how far does $40k go in Santiago for a team of 2-3?

~~~
pedalpete
It isn't hard to get paid if you've done any sort of expenses for a big corp,
but this is government which operates in a different language, so lots of red
tape and (when I was there) regularly changing rules. I'd think things would
have settled down by now.

You only get back business expenses, and a small amount to recover your living
costs. Chile is not as cheap as you might think, it isn't like living in South
East Asia on a few dollars a day. You need to have $10k to give yourself some
breathing room so you don't run out of money within the first two months when
you start get the reimbursements.

The salaries scale based on the number of founders, so that you are somewhat
covering the costs of having more people on the team. However, it all comes
out of the same $40k, so that leaves you less to spend on the business, if you
have larger business costs.

I have some friends who were caught out significant $$ due to paperwork that
wasn't accepted by the gov't, when the REALLY should have been reimbursed. At
the same time, there were people who worked the system and got reimbursed for
things they shouldn't have.

One thing that is good about the difficult reimbursement process is that it
teaches you to keep an eye on your balance sheet, which is something you're
going to need to learn to operate a business anyway.

~~~
etagwerker
I know that on Round 6 they are experimenting with the Lump Sum agreement,
making it easier for some startups to get 100% or 50% of the $40k in advance.

I wish they had done that with my round.

I have complained and suggested alternatives for their very slow reimbursement
process. I think they are open to constructive criticism, but as any
government institution change is slow.

The one thing that I kept saying to myself is that it was equity-free.

