Why you should apply to Startup Chile (from a Round 4 entrepreneur) | Hacker News Reader

Why you should apply to Startup Chile (from a Round 4 entrepreneur)

clairepelletreau.com

6 pointsetagwerker6 comments

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

It is hard to get paid. Every time there is a reimbursement you have to dedicate many hours to get all the paperwork right.

You will need to spend $10-$15k to get started, before you see a dime from Startup Chile. In a team of 3, I'd say closer to $15k.

$40k is definitely enough for a team of 3 to move to Santiago and work on your idea/product for 6 months.

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