Collaborating with Chileans at Inacap was a wonderful experience. Inacap session started with our professor Michael Goldberg giving a talk about entrepreneurship and the resources available to do so. We were divided up in teams and we got aspiring Chilean entrepreneurs on our team. We had Mario and Carlos on our team who wanted to start their business in selling used consumer electronics since consumer electronics are expensive and a lot of Chileans can't afford it.
We worked in teams to figure out what they thought was wrong with the funding situation right now and why they think there is lack of entrepreneurship. They started out saying how lack of advertisement was a big thing. They found about Cumplo from us and were very surprised about it. Lack of knowledge about funding makes a lot of entrepreneurs turn away and go back to their jobs. They also think learning English is a big thing, but it is expensive to do so. They didn't know about the large number of smartphone apps available that teach you languages.
A lot of Chileans don't go to college. Awareness about funding and the idea of entrepreneurship should be started early on from high school. Bringing in speakers who are currently working in the industries or people who started their own business would be beneficial to Chileans. Lastly, we noticed that we had to push them to move from problem listing phase to actually solution finding phase. They got too engrossed in thinking about problems, but when it came to solutions they were clueless. This might be the cause of slow growth of entrepreneurs too.
This session was very fruitful for all of us. We learned a lot from them and they learned a lot from us. This collaboration would have been much harder if Mario and Carlos didn't know English, but thankfully they did. Interesting session overall!
- Vrushti Patel
We worked in teams to figure out what they thought was wrong with the funding situation right now and why they think there is lack of entrepreneurship. They started out saying how lack of advertisement was a big thing. They found about Cumplo from us and were very surprised about it. Lack of knowledge about funding makes a lot of entrepreneurs turn away and go back to their jobs. They also think learning English is a big thing, but it is expensive to do so. They didn't know about the large number of smartphone apps available that teach you languages.
A lot of Chileans don't go to college. Awareness about funding and the idea of entrepreneurship should be started early on from high school. Bringing in speakers who are currently working in the industries or people who started their own business would be beneficial to Chileans. Lastly, we noticed that we had to push them to move from problem listing phase to actually solution finding phase. They got too engrossed in thinking about problems, but when it came to solutions they were clueless. This might be the cause of slow growth of entrepreneurs too.
This session was very fruitful for all of us. We learned a lot from them and they learned a lot from us. This collaboration would have been much harder if Mario and Carlos didn't know English, but thankfully they did. Interesting session overall!
- Vrushti Patel