

Ask HN: How is your Start-Up Chile experience? - boolean

I applied for the current round and will know by next month if I get accepted. What I read are mostly positive, however I'd love to hear your experiences.<p>Are the required events very time consuming?
Can you get by easily with the maximum salary you can take?
Is it easy to find local talents with good English skills? What's the average salary for an intermediate web developer?<p>Thanks!
======
jot
I participated in round 1.5, arrived in July 2011 and stayed in Chile until
the end of March. If you have the right expectations _you_ can make Start-Up
Chile a fantastic experience. The biggest mistake I and others made was to
compare it in any way to accelerators like Y Combinator or TechStars.

Unless you have well in excess of $10K in the bank (credit doesn't count)
expect to be constantly stressed about cash flow.

Don't expect to have any of the $10K that you bring left at the end of the 6
months, you won't get 90% of everything you spend reimbursed.

Don't expect to have any pressure or external deadlines from Start-Up Chile to
actually ship anything.

Don't expect to find mentors that can help you with all too common startup
killers like co-founder disputes.

Don't expect to be impressed by the quality of all your peer teams and
startups.

Don't expect to be impressed with Santiago as a city or the food, culture and
natural beauty in the surrounding area. The best bits of Chile are well
outside the central part of the country.

Don't expect to find a technical cofounder or a development team in Chile.

Do expect constant change, mixed messages, a little chaos and inflexibility on
things that seem trivial to you. Startup Chile is run by a team of good people
with great intensions that are probably the most entrepreneurial people in
government. However they are not entrepreneurs, they are a government
department with lots of rules and regulation that is effectively run by
committee. Sadly they don't have the leadership or the power to make Startup
Chile as good as it could be. Start-Up Chile would be much more effective if a
startup veteran were given $40MM to turn Chile into a startup hub by investing
it in 1000 startups independently of government, but that was probably felt
too much for the electorate to stomach.

With those expectations set hopefully you can come to Chile and focus on
building something awesome and creating a strong support network for yourself
rather than wasting any time being frustrated by imperfections in the
programme.

I've been quite negative in this post to provide some balance to all the
positive press which you've already read. Overall I'm grateful for the
experience and I have recommended it to my friends, some of which are now in
Chile. There is also no doubt in my mind that Start-Up Chile is doing great
things for the country and I think more developing world countries should
replicate the approach.

~~~
IanOzsvald
@jot's a friend of mine, we (<http://strongsteam.com/>) followed out in
January in Round 2.5. His notes match my experiences and those of others here
in Round 2.5.

A group of us have just started a weekly self-mentorship group, frankly I
should have started such a group 2 months back (I've been here 10 weeks now).
Get on with this quickly when you arrive (and expect to iterate, experiment
and change all the time)

Definitely come with spare cash - $10k is probably about right. Better yet -
have a client lined up before you come who pays you as you hit your deadlines
whilst here. It kept us on our toes, we delivered, we had cash-flow.

~~~
IanOzsvald
In addition, here are 3 blog posts which might help:

[http://ianozsvald.com/2012/02/20/startupchile-pycon-
strongst...](http://ianozsvald.com/2012/02/20/startupchile-pycon-strongsteam/)

[http://ianozsvald.com/2012/03/24/this-week-in-startups-
stron...](http://ianozsvald.com/2012/03/24/this-week-in-startups-strongsteam-
pitch-reimbursements-mentorship/)

[http://ianozsvald.com/2012/03/30/2nd-dataai-meetup-
official-...](http://ianozsvald.com/2012/03/30/2nd-dataai-meetup-official-sup-
event-at-santiagos-hackerspace-next-wednesday/)

The third is about the AI/data meet we setup - over 100 folk turned up to hear
4 of us speak at the just-opened hackerspace, a founder of Skype also spoke
and a local entrepreneur brought local beers. It was a darned fine evening.

------
andrewcross
Most of the advice here is rock solid, so I'll summarize it/my experience (2nd
round, arrived in Nov 2011):

-Work on your Spanish ahead of time. It helps a lot, but you don't NEED it (I knew nothing before coming down).

-Stay in a hostel/hotel for a few days when you get down here in order to find a better place.

-Bring down at least $10K. It took me two months to get my first reimbursement and I was running pretty low by then.

-Accept that at least one full day a month will be wasted on bureaucracy (reimbursements & mandatory presentations to locals)

-Don't expect to get high quality talent here that speaks English fluently. Those that have found talent are far outnumbered by those that haven't (technical & business).

-Don't expect to have strong mentorship like 500, YC or TechStars. It's all peer mentorship.

-Realize that the strength of the program is the international component. There's a lot of market opps in Latinamerica that a lot of people have no idea about. It's also rare to have such an global composition of entrepreneurs.

It's not perfect for everyone, but if you're:

-pre product/market fit

-interested in international markets

-cool with trading some time wasted with bureaucracy for equity free funding

then it's a great choice.

~~~
Achshar
isn't 10k a little too much? they suggest 5k and that supports what i have
read about otherwise.

~~~
andrewcross
It definitely depends on team size, but we brought down three people and were
pretty close to running out of the $10K.

I'm not an isolated case either. Quite a few other people were depending on
that first reimbursement to pay the next month's rent.

~~~
Achshar
but they only reimburse for two people other than the founder. so you paid for
the flights out of your pocket?

~~~
andrewcross
You pay for everything out of pocket and get reimbursed later. So when you put
flights, rent, rent deposit, food, external monitors, etc. together for three
people over two months it adds up.

------
volandovengo
I have been taking part in Start-up chile since January 15th. Overall - it has
been a fantastic experience. I came primarily to receive the 40k but quickly
realized that the connections with other entrepreneurs is the best perk. Where
else can you go in the world to acquire a network of 300+ internet
entrepreneurs from all over the world who are currently heads down working on
their companies?!

The program does have issues - the reimbursement process is one of them. You
should plan to take about a day each month to thoroughly go through your
expenses documenting your expenditures for a review committee. After your
claims, many times they get rejected at which time you have a day to scramble
to re-submit. All in all most of the time they get accepted after a bit of a
struggle.

You are also required to give back to Chile in some way (this is called RVA).
The process actually isn't too time consuming and is pretty fun to get to know
other aspiring entrepreneurs. The easiest way is to just mentor a Chilean
student 20 hours (which fulfills your requirements) but you can go so far as
to organize a conference or teach a course on entrepreneurship (i am).

About your other questions: 1 - you are allowed to draw a salary of 600 per
month, you are also allowed to expense your rent. 2 - Most of the upper class
in Chile speak fluent english, you'll be surprised how developed Chile is,
Santiago is the most developed city in Latin America that I have visited. The
metro is a dream, there's plenty of green space and things run very orderly. 3
- You can hire an intermediate web developer for between 500-1000 a month.
Salaries here are much cheaper.

~~~
gregwebs
I didn't see much of anything green in Santiago: quite the opposite. Perhaps
you living near a park or the mountains or my standards are higher.

~~~
volandovengo
I do live right next to a park. You can also see the Andes from pretty much
anywhere in the city.

~~~
gregwebs
Sure you can see the Andes, but it is obscured by the smog in addition to the
high rises.

You can get free Wifi at Parque de Los Reyes next to the convention center,
but it is unusable when there is activity in the center.

------
rimbo789
I'm in the second batch and am in Chile right now.

The required events are not that time consuming. The reimbursement process
will always take longer then you would like but it is not that burdensome.
Also other Startup Chileans can help you out with the process if you need it.
As for the other requirements they are not that time consuming at all. In
particular if you are in a team you can divide up events as not the whole team
has to go to everything.

Compared to Canada I find Chile and we can get by easily with the maximum
salary. That being said finding housing as each successive round takes up the
already limited supply of furnished 2-3 bedroom apartments.

As for local talents, I have not personally had to look for any but from what
i've heard finding talent with good english skills is quiet difficult

In terms of social isolation, and cultural issues, I would say one of the
advantages of the program is that there is an instant, English speaking,
community for each round, so everyone has an instant social network. That
being said, I personally find it frustrating that my lack of spanish skills
mean my social network is limited to the program, as I would like to connect
more with chileans and chilean culture.

The biggest culture shock for me was the lack of trust. Coming from Canada, I
didn't know what to expect by the term 'chile is a low trust country'. It
means security guards everywhere, it means retail processes are more
complicated (buying an electronic product involves 3-4 different stations you
have to go to) and it means nothing happens unless there is a contract.

Overall I find Chile a wonderful place with incredibly friendly people (and
very patient when you butcher their language).

~~~
boolean
When I moved to Canada I felt the opposite culture shock :) Trust was
everywhere, I was shocked to see in Vancouver, skytrain fairs were just
checked randomly and rarely.

What would you recommend for accommodation? Do you think it's better to
arrange before arriving there? Craigslist is probably not popular there,
what's the popular local classifieds website?

~~~
jstabbac
I'm Rimbo's teammate, I'll pitch in my two cents. mercadolibre.cl is your goto
classified site, however most people in the program don't use it. There's also
olx.cl. For housing homechile.cl is pretty good.

We arranged an apartment through homechile.cl before we got down. Honestly I
would only recommend that if you've never really travelled before as the place
we ended up getting isn't really the nicest. Most people come down and stay at
someone else's place, their padrino's (a local arranged to be your goto
person) place, or hotel/hostel it for a while. I'd recommend to take your time
once you get here finding a place to stay as there are some amazing apartments
that you may miss out on if you search online.

I am going to note that you should come down with at least 10k in your pocket.
The first reimbursement is very slow, it usually takes about a month and a
half to two months. This is because you first need to get your RUT card
(identity card, you use it for everything), then have the program prepare the
contract, then sign the contract, then wait for their lawyers to sign it.
After that (about 3 weeks) you are officially in the program. For our round we
could expense things up to this point however a round 3 wave 2 participant
told me that they could NOT expense anything until this point as a rule
change. This means all those expenses are out of pocket. The reimbursement
phase takes about 2-3 weeks and you will NOT get all of your expenses approved
the first time you submit. As an example, we only got about 52% approval.
There's a lot of little things you need to do for every expense and it's
really hard to keep track of them all.

------
nischalshetty
We were part of the first batch of Start-Up Chile. It's a good program if you
are really at the very first stage of your product. We had just a basic
prototype of GrabInbox and hence it was the right decision for us. The program
gave us money to survive the 6 months and we also had enough to spend on
building the product.

Can you get by easily with the maximum salary you can take? As far as living
by on the maximum salary is concerned, it can be a little difficult but it's
possible. You might have to try and cook your own food at least a few times a
week or may be eat at a cheaper place. The accommodation allowance is
different from the salary and is more than enough.

Are the required events very time consuming? The process for reimbursement can
be a bit time consuming but if you start saving bills for your expenses and
not scamper at the last minute when its time to reimburse, it would help. As I
find out now, saving receipts right from the beginning is a habit I would
suggest every entrepreneur to inculcate because once you start running your
business it's important to stay organized. It helps in filing your tax
returns.

Is it easy to find local talents with good English skills? Local talent with
good english skills is hard to find.

What's the average salary for an intermediate web developer? Won't be able to
answer that as we did not hire any local developer.

~~~
boolean
Thanks for the information. Did you stay after the 6 months? It's probably
cheaper to live there than North America, so do many companies prefer to
continue working in Santiago?

~~~
nischalshetty
I'm from India and it made more financial sense for us to go back. But, a lot
of friends from my batch are still there post the 6 months (many from the
north). It's definitely cheaper than North America and if you can find the
right developers, nothing like it. And unlike us (30+ hour travel back to
India) it's more convenient for you to visit your country and be back in
Chile.

------
guillehorno
Hi guys! I participated in Start-Up Chile, my project was selected in round 1.

The experience is amazing and overall positive, you get to know a lot of cool
people, learn a lot, experience other cultures and have the resources to make
your startup better.

Answering your questions I can say that the required events are not time
consuming and a good opportunity to meet and connect with other people. You
can skip a few events if you are busy, but its good to stay in touch with the
other teams.

The maximum salary that you can take is enough to do the regular things (buy
food, transportation, night life, etc). That salary plus the money to pay rent
is enough for a decent stay.

Finding local talent with English skills is not that easy but you can do it.
I've seen some teams that were able to get good talent fast, for some others
was difficult. I wouldn't say that its going to be easy, but they are there,
you can find good ones. The salary of a intermediate web developer may go from
500-1000 dollars a month to 2K or 3K (for some super experienced ones), it all
depends on the conditions and the experience of the web developer.

The only "not-so-fun" part about the program is the reimbursement process. You
have to fill a spreadsheet and gather all the receipts and bills, somethings
some items get rejected because a paper was not the right one, etc. I don't
say "bad" part because its a more than fair price to pay (and completely
understandable from their point of view, trying to control that you are not
going crazy with your money) to be a part of the program and get the money. I
rather go to a reimbursement process than to give equity for the 40K.

Here's an article from a round 1 friend that explains some other things:
<http://bit.ly/IkBzo5>

------
liquimoon
I arrived in Chile one week ago as part of the 3.2 batch. So far the
experience has been positive. While it's true that it's more like a peer
mentorship, there is a good supply of talents in the program. Some have had
exits, some worked at great companies like 37 signals and pivotal tracker,
Google, Yahoo and etc. We also have some awesome speakers. Just last week, we
had Ahti Heinla, the cofounder of Skype.

So far for people in our batch, the biggest source of stress comes from
finding apartment while speaking little English. Each company is assigned a
padrino, local Chilean entrepreneur to help out with picking you up at the
airport and finding apartment. So, you will want to take advantage of that. I
exchanged emails and setup Skype call with my padrino prior to arriving in
Chile. It definitely helped with relationship building.

The other tip is to really use social media. There is a private Facebook group
for Startup Chile participants. I found my current apartment through that.
Also, if you are looking to talk to more participants before you get accepted
into the program, try to join the meetup group at <http://goo.gl/Hw67S>.

Hope that helps,

Jerry

~~~
komrade
I guess you are very lucky with your padrino. I saw mine once at a party and
that's it.

Finding an apartment/house for 3 people is tough especially when you don't
speak Spanish. It took us several weeks to find. Apart from that we had to pay
$3600 usd upfront for the house. As many people mentioned above you have to
bring at least 10K to Chile.

~~~
IanOzsvald
Our padrino has been ace - we drink with him every week and he drove me to the
FIDAE air show last Saturday. We seem to be an exception, many others only
meet their padrino(/madrina) once or twice. As ever if you put time into a new
relationship with a stranger there's a chance it'll pay off, you have to work
at it (and accept it might not work out).

------
jot
Here's a detailed run down of the latest version of the reimbursement process:
[http://emilytoop.com/2012/03/20/my-first-reimbursement-
proce...](http://emilytoop.com/2012/03/20/my-first-reimbursement-process-an-
assessment/) Emily's in round 2.5 which started in January. I was in round 1.5
which started in July, things have improved a lot since then.

~~~
IanOzsvald
As @jot's friend, member of Round 2.5 and Emily's other half I'll add:
reimbursements took 2 days for us the first time and 1 day the second time.
The first time it took about 20 days for the money to come back, the second
time about 10 days.

The stories from Round 1 (e.g. @jot) scared the bejeezus out of us, we spent a
solid Sunday getting every scrap of paper to prove our expenses (from invoice
to credit card to bank account to our names on a bank statement proving
ownership). They're more on top of the process now than in Round 1, we did
have to get some extra docs but it just involved a few phone calls back home.

I believe for Round 3 it is a bit easier and I'd expect it to keep improving.
Assume 1-2 days admin on this every month regardless (just with less follow-up
stress after you submit your docs).

------
andress
I would like to throw some random thoughts:

1) It seems like people coming from Lat Am makes the most progress out of the
program. Not only they get contracts from recognized companies and banks like
Telefonica and BBVA, but they seem to find private investment after the
program far more easily (Eg: Junar, Taggify, inbed.me, Safertaxi, Hadza,
AgentPiggy, etcetera). Why? You can prolly draw your own conclussions as i
don't have an answer just hypothesis.

2.- It is hard to find good developers that are fluent in English and if you
find them they will be expensive. In the other hand it is a far easier to find
good designers, business development employees/founders.

3.-While Chileans are shy and elusive the first time you met them, they are
incredibly welcoming with most of the foreigners and WILL appreciate any
effort you make speaking Spanish (even if its the most awful Spanish in the
world)

------
dustingetz
i'm a strong developer located in US. demonstration of competence: [1].

i'd be interested in considering opportunities in chile. if you gave me the
time and financial comfort to enjoy chile a bit, I'd totally do six months if
i found a team i vibed with.

just tossing a dart here. my availability starts around summertime.

[1] dustin's awesome monad tutorial for humans:
[https://github.com/dustingetz/dustingetz.github.com/blob/mas...](https://github.com/dustingetz/dustingetz.github.com/blob/master/_posts/2012-04-07-dustins-
awesome-monad-tutorial-for-humans-in-python.md) [2] resume
<http://careers.stackoverflow.com/dustingetz>

------
pagekalisedown
I'd be interested to know if anyone felt social isolation, or culture shock,
being in a foreign country.

~~~
nischalshetty
It will take a while to realize knowing English would not really help you
much. IMO, it's important that you know some basic Spanish. But this isn't a
deal breaker as I did not know any Spanish but eventually figured out enough
words to get the job done.

Be ready to see people making out in the open, on the streets, in the metro
stations and inside the metro standing beside you.

The food is generally bland, deal with it.

~~~
andrewcooke
heh. the making out is partly because people here live at home for much
longer, and, in the areas where i imagine startup chile people live and work
(the idea that having to cook a couple of times a week is unusual made me
smile...), there are also maids that live in people's houses (and so have
nowhere private for guests).

also "making out" here would be petting, not sex...

food here is not spicy, but it is made with fresh, good quality ingredients
(the sandwiches are awesome, imho). and the variety of food you can get in
santiago is increasing (when i first arrived here, over a decade ago, there
was just one indian restaurant - now my favourite place to eat is russian!)

~~~
komrade
Where is the Russian place? Being a Russian myself I would like to take a look
at it.

Overall, I didn't have a culture shock after coming down to Santiago. The only
thing that really surprised me is that many young people don't speak any
English.. You can get by any where in Asia with English but it's different in
South America.

~~~
andrewcooke
Olivie <http://www.olivie.cl/> in SW Providencia, not far from the N end of
Av. Italia (my quick review - <http://acooke.org/cute/RaiandOliv0.html>).

Also, you can buy Arsenaloye beer in Jumbo/Santa Isabel supermarkets at the
moment, if you miss that... :o)

------
petedoyle
Are there many limits on what you can have reimbursed? I'm especially curious
about hardware (would buy a Macbook Pro, monitor, Android phone+tablet, DSLR -
all business related) and lawyers fees (for incorporation in the USA, privacy
policies, etc).

Also, is it easy to find a nice place near the coworking spaces? Ideally, I'd
love just a short walk between home and the "office".

~~~
rimbo789
The limits depend on the rules of each round. That being said, so long as you
incur the hardware costs and legal fees during your 6 months in the program it
should be reimbursed. However consult with your rounds rules first, and when
in doubt ask your account executive.

As for how easy, I'd say it depends on what you are used to. Finding a place,
now that there are two full rounds in Chile, is getting harder. You'll have to
look on a bunch of sites (I recommend homechile.cl) Sometimes you can get
lucky doing door to door to apartments. In June the first participants in the
second round will be starting to leave chile so it might be worth asking the
community then.

~~~
petedoyle
Thank you, that's encouraging. Note to others: use _www._ homechile.cl.

------
herval
My experience (round 1) wasn't good nor very popular among the most "pro-
startupchile" individuals. It's documented here:
<http://hervalicio.us/post/14915671294/on-startup-chile>

Basically, it's a good opportunity if you don't have a business network (or a
business) and go there with the sole objective of networking and getting to
know people. Other than that, it's a great opportunity for tourism (most
people I hear saying they "loved the program" were very focused on getting
girlfriends and visiting the idillic places of Chile). Not much more than
that, I'm afraid...

In any case, I heard from more recent batches that things changed a lot in
rounds 2 and 3 (not sure if for better or worse).

------
ccarnino
It's one of the ways to be able to work 6/7 months stress free on your
product, with a real budged. It doesn't increase your success rate, but gives
you a longer runaway and an amazing experience. It will connect you and you'll
make a lot of important friends. I was in round 1

------
jerryji
Excuse my ignorance: By skimming through the program rules, I got the feeling
that you can only expense up to $40K over the 6-month stay in Chile, but not
save some to take away with you when the batch finishes, am I not right?

~~~
ew
That's completely dependent on what you submit fr reimbursement. There's
absolutely zero rules stating you can't outsource $40k worth of work to a
company in your home country that you just happen to own. As long as the work
has been 'completed' in they will reimburse it. Start-Up Chile will not pay
for things that will happen, only what has happened, so you can't get
advances.

------
j_camarena
I'm from the second badge of the 2nd generation. It's simply awesome :)!.

\- Greetings from Mexico.

------
melling
Is it possible for people outside Chile to connect with local developers in
Santiago? I speak some Spanish. The talent pool must be growing.

~~~
agustinf
Well, yes.. I am a chilean developer myself, and run a meetup.com community of
chilean developers called Huevapi (read as "web api" in spanish)

