Start-Up Chile is a Great Experience But Be Careful Too | Hacker News Reader

Start-Up Chile is a Great Experience But Be Careful Too

nextmontreal.com

36 pointsvamsee22 comments

As someone who went through the program:

(1) it's not technically true that you HAVE to spend the money before you get it reimbursed. We were given the option of purchasing insurance from the private sector to cover the government in the event of the funds being misallocated. None of the teams decided this was worth doing since it takes time to arrange the insurance and you end up paying the bank for holding the risk. Why waste that money?

(2) My understanding is that the $750 monthly salary mentioned here is the no-questions-asked limit on personal compensation for the individual whose name is on the contract. It was introduced to avoid having people need to keep track of all of their receipts. I believe you can justify more if you're willing to collect and submit those receipts (not worth the time), and you can always pay coworkers more by simply issuing a legal receipt for services rendered by them to your company. I didn't take salary myself but had no problems paying individual staff up to 2500 USD per month.

(3) It costs about 6000-8000 USD for a team to take advantage of the program since there are some things you can't get receipts for (housing deposits, miscellaneous cash expenses). Those expenses end up being front-loaded, but you are still looking at a 7x money multiplier on your matching funds (the funding works out to over 42000 USD once the exchange rate is figured in). Expecting teams to contribute 1000 of their own capital per month while pursuing their own business is not a high bar.

hey, since you've been through the program and we recently got selected I had a few questions - that I hope you'd answer:

1) Can you stay on there longer after the 6 months? What are the permit restrictions etc?

2) How many people actually came there with little or no product ready and actually built up while in Chile itself?

3) What are the odds that people who fall under the category of 2) got funding there itself?

What I am trying to understand is - is this something more worthwhile for those who already have something running and are maybe already talking to investors? Or is it also an equally good opportunity for people who've been playing with an idea and will have maybe 60% ready by the time they get there - but have no other investment other than their own money ?

Thanks a lot!

and in that case what are the odds of actually finding investors during the program? (do they have serious investors visiting etc?)

We got serious inbound inquiries just from taking part.

thanks for the quick answers! can I contact you in any other way with more questions please?

absolutely -- contact info through profile. It's a brilliant program though -- if you've been accepted, by all means go. :)

(1) The visa is good for a year and you can extend as long as you're able to support yourself. (2) Every single person there was building something. (3) It's not a lottery -- if you want funding you have to be fundable, and decide to raise money instead of bootstrapping.

There is serious investment capital available. The point isn't that you're guaranteed to raise it. It's that if you can't get a higher valuation and better terms after six months of work and 40,000 in free outside investment then you probably don't have a company anyone will fund anyway.

As a current member of the program, I would argue that it is better suited for a company in idea-phase, where the founders likely still having a savings account available (for the two month money issue Ken describes).

I'm the writer of the post. You were in the Pilot of the program, they adjusted the rules of the program through their experience with you, our program is subsequently different. The same thing is currently happening from feedback within our cohort and they are adjusting it for the next cohort, it will be a different program for them than it is for us. I stand fully behind the $10K being the number needed to fully access your grant. This is a critical number that the new cohort should know so that they don't come in and end up in a difficult position.

I'm also on the current program. It's true, you need at least $10K cash in the bank to be able to gain full access to the grant. We thought it would be around $5K that we would need but it's turned out to be much more.

I very much hope that this changes for the next cohort of participants.

i was surprised by "agent fee for finding your apartment" - apartments are listed in el mercurio. just go to http://www.propiedades.emol.com/_portada/index.aspx and do the clicky. also, i imagine you can't claim for housing deposits because it's a deposit - you get it back.

[i'm a software engineer that lives in santiago and i'm in the middle of buying an appt as an investment and would be happy to rent it to someone in the business, so can i ask some questions? are people looking for furnished or unfurnished? does it need to be central or is anywhere with access to the metro ok? what kind of rents are people paying?

and finally, i imagine you're already inundated with help and contacts, but if anyone does need someone local who speaks english just drop me a line.]

Hi Andrew,

As someone who is going to Santiago as part of the program, I've done some research based on previous participants' experiences.

Find apartments using Home Chile (http://www.homechile.cl/) and all are furnished. Many recommended Providencia area.

Since you are based there, hope you don't mind if I ping you for questions.

matt

sure - email in profile. most appts here are unfurnished, i think (makes sense for local long-term use) which probably explains why homechile (which i didn't know about, thanks) exists. providencia is a nice place to live (i live there and i imagine it's similar standards to what people from the usa would be used to), but it's certainly not the lowest price area.

ps wasn't going to post this as a separate answer because it's 10 years old and i had a local job offer, but i found getting permanent residence to be very easy (i had arrived on a tourist visa, which can be renewed for up to 6 months). i can't remember if having the job offer was critical (i think it was the other way round - i needed the residency because employment would have been illegal on a tourist visa), but what surprised me was the need to show evidence of education level, so bring some kind of certificate!

Thanks!

From the Startup Chile FAQ, participants are entitled up to $600,000 CLP monthly spending on rental. Many had fully furnished apartments around Providencia with facilities like pool and gym (from HomeChile listings, apartments with such facilities are around 400k-600k). Providencia are also recommended because it is said to be safer.

PS: Another website similar to HomeChile is ContactChile (http://www.contactchile.cl)

ok, so now i'm curious - if they paid less for somewhere to live, would they have more money for their startup? i'm sure you can imagine that the programmers that they are hiring for $1m a month don't spend 60% of their wages on pads with gyms and pools...

From what I know, yes. But the total reimbursement is capped at $40k USD which includes salaries and rental expenses.

Yes. As a single founder in the program I can claim up to 400 000 CLP, I currently pay 300 000. The difference is now available for me to use for any other purpose that is reimbursable.

(startupchile participant) I highly, highly recommend homechile. Fernando, the manager, speaks good English, was a big help in finding an appropriate place and has helped us multiple times with translation when issues like having our internet randomly go out have come up. Providencia is a nice centralized location and near the office. If I could do it over I probably would have tried to pick a place in Manuel Montt (Providencia) as it is walking distance from the office and also near most of the nightlife.

Using an agent is a good idea when you have no lay of the land. There are safe and less safe areas here, knowing the difference is what an agent does for you. Also, if you do not speak the language negotiating can be extremely difficult, a local agent can iron all those out. For me the fee was only around $125 USD, which is reasonable for the work they do upfront and the ongoing support they can give you on the backend.

for $125 i agree it's not worth arguing about, and also support is reassuring. but if someone does want to save some money it's worth knowing that you don't find apts at that price in unsafe areas. santiago is very divided (physically) by class.

BTW ... do you keep the job offers up to date? I'm Chilean and interested on joining a startup but I'm not sure if the offers published on www.startupchile.org/joinastartup/ are up to date or not.

Yes, they're up to date and constantly changing.

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