Discover ST>RT-UP CHILE

We met Yessenia Carvajal, marketing executive and business accelerator manager and Nicolas Vega knowledge executive at Startup Chile that introduce us the concept and explain us how they help entrepreneurs from all around the world to launch their ideas.

Start-up Chile is a public accelerator which is part of the government. It has been created in 2010. What was the main purpose of such an initiative? They wanted to make innovative companies come to Chile to create a great ecosystem to change mindset of Chilean people. They created a workspace for Chilean and innovative entrepreneurs in technology with a social goal: share their experience, their knowledge with locals (startups, universities, etc.)

Start-up Chile has achieved their first goal, since then, Chile has become one of the most advanced country in the innovation scale in LATAM and in the world. The company has opened its doors to more than 80 countries and local projects by the opportunity; a great place to work, a visa for one year, financial help and a lot of connections.

The second purpose of the organization is to change the economy of Chile. They create an acceleration program to help entrepreneurs developing their skills before launching their company. It is called the SEED program, including:

• 30 000 dollars to start (public help so they don’t take a part of it)

• Visa for one year

• Lot of connections: for example ENEL is a great partner which supports a lot of projects and they coming to visit each project in the area

• Investors mentors and corporate -portfolio of companies that want to test entrepreneurs’ concept and to work with them

• Different services from companies like Microsoft, Google or Amazon that play a great role for entrepreneurs’ business model as they need it a lot but can’t always afford it.

They can find a great help in this more and more growing community. Start-up Chile organizes teaching lessons as well for the young projects in all areas -marketing, RH, strategy, pitch lessons -to be prepared for the market. The team and exterior teachers contribute to these lessons.

Start-up Chile is receiving between 200 to 250 projects per year through their platform and check all the projects before picking some in every type of sector -even though energy, especially renewable energy has become a more and more popular topic. They make two calls to action per year.

Since 2015, Start-up Chile has notified that there were far fewer female team leaders than male -so they created a specific program for women entrepreneurs completing the 6-month SEED program called The S Factory (TSF):

• They are being accompanied for 4 months

• They are given 15000 dollars

This is a great program to give opportunities to women to launch their companies not only as part of a team but as a leader.

If you are interested in launching your own company it may be a good opportunity, please visit their website: http://www.startupchile.org/