Visiting Inacap in Santiago, Chile was an eye-opening experience. I went in to the visit expecting to meet entrepreneurs and investors chomping at the bit of unbridled capitalism, thriving and urgent to unlock the value of the Chilean. While that spirit certainly permeated the room, the reality for most entrepreneurs was somewhat different.
Most of the week's meetings prior to Inacap & Startup Chile (Crumplo, Microsoft, Wenco, etc.) had demonstrated that Chile was rife with ideas and value potential. I was genuinely excited about this emerging LatAm economy. Like a typical, arrogant American visiting an emerging economy on business, I found myself dreaming of moving to Chile to help unlock the dormant value of the economy. Everybody needs everything, all the time, just like the US. The roads in Santiago are amazing, the people are wonderful and the wine is extraordinary - what more do they need to get started creating? A lot, it turns out.
My group discussion at the Inacap discussions was quite revealing. At our table was an entrepreneur, an entrepreneurial consultant and a representative from the US Embassy. Gabriel, the entrepreneur had graduated from Inacap and had developed a new system to extract copper from ore during mining process. Copper is the backbone of Chilean economy and as such as goes copper, so goes Chile. Currently, copper has fallen by more than 50% off its highs. One would expect Gabriel's technology, which proposes to reduce the cost of extraction by reducing water requirements, to be embraced at least by the venture world, if not by industry itself.
What I discovered was that Gabriel was stuck: he expressed his general frustration at his own lack of business acumen; he expressed deep frustration at the bureaucratic tangle starting a business in Chile; and he expressed a sense that failure was not an option. Aldo, the consultant, rattled off a litany of "problems" which lead Chile to these conclusions: lack of creativity; aversion to risk; no accountability; bureaucracy; and on and on. Essentially, getting ideas was easy, activating ideas seems impossible.
It is this difficulty of activity which I find of most contrast between the American entrepreneurial culture and the Chilean one. Gabriel had uncovered a seemingly ingenious way to extract copper from ore in a less expensive way, and yet he did not know where to turn, how to move forward. Aldo listed numerous problems, but no solutions, reckoning that Chileans CAN'T move forward because of these myriad obstacles. All of us agreed that these are indeed wicked problems.
And still, I am hopeful for Chilean entrepreneurs, partly because of places like Startup Chile. Walking into Startup Chile was like walking into a coder's playground: groups of coders and marketers and biz dev types clustered around computers and table tops busily working out there products. I can only imagine the cross-talk and intermingling of ideas which happens on a regular basis here. Add to that the active investment going on, and I would say that Startup Chile is a great way to at least motivate the entrepreneurial spirit, and at best it could be the catalyst required to finally unlock the Chilean value.
Chile has so much to offer, and so much potential value: developing software solutions to reduce costs of copper production; engineering energy solutions to further drive down costs of copper production; developing smarter analytics for improving crop yields; improving access to capital; and generally modernizing the Chilean economy the final 10 - 20% required to catch it up with the connected world represents enormous opportunity.
I sincerely hope that entrepreneurs like Gabriel can make the connections requried to activate his idea. I sincerely hope that consultants like Aldo can move beyond defining problems and get to solving them. And I sincerely hope to visit Chile again and experience that progress.
Most of the week's meetings prior to Inacap & Startup Chile (Crumplo, Microsoft, Wenco, etc.) had demonstrated that Chile was rife with ideas and value potential. I was genuinely excited about this emerging LatAm economy. Like a typical, arrogant American visiting an emerging economy on business, I found myself dreaming of moving to Chile to help unlock the dormant value of the economy. Everybody needs everything, all the time, just like the US. The roads in Santiago are amazing, the people are wonderful and the wine is extraordinary - what more do they need to get started creating? A lot, it turns out.
My group discussion at the Inacap discussions was quite revealing. At our table was an entrepreneur, an entrepreneurial consultant and a representative from the US Embassy. Gabriel, the entrepreneur had graduated from Inacap and had developed a new system to extract copper from ore during mining process. Copper is the backbone of Chilean economy and as such as goes copper, so goes Chile. Currently, copper has fallen by more than 50% off its highs. One would expect Gabriel's technology, which proposes to reduce the cost of extraction by reducing water requirements, to be embraced at least by the venture world, if not by industry itself.
What I discovered was that Gabriel was stuck: he expressed his general frustration at his own lack of business acumen; he expressed deep frustration at the bureaucratic tangle starting a business in Chile; and he expressed a sense that failure was not an option. Aldo, the consultant, rattled off a litany of "problems" which lead Chile to these conclusions: lack of creativity; aversion to risk; no accountability; bureaucracy; and on and on. Essentially, getting ideas was easy, activating ideas seems impossible.
It is this difficulty of activity which I find of most contrast between the American entrepreneurial culture and the Chilean one. Gabriel had uncovered a seemingly ingenious way to extract copper from ore in a less expensive way, and yet he did not know where to turn, how to move forward. Aldo listed numerous problems, but no solutions, reckoning that Chileans CAN'T move forward because of these myriad obstacles. All of us agreed that these are indeed wicked problems.
And still, I am hopeful for Chilean entrepreneurs, partly because of places like Startup Chile. Walking into Startup Chile was like walking into a coder's playground: groups of coders and marketers and biz dev types clustered around computers and table tops busily working out there products. I can only imagine the cross-talk and intermingling of ideas which happens on a regular basis here. Add to that the active investment going on, and I would say that Startup Chile is a great way to at least motivate the entrepreneurial spirit, and at best it could be the catalyst required to finally unlock the Chilean value.
Chile has so much to offer, and so much potential value: developing software solutions to reduce costs of copper production; engineering energy solutions to further drive down costs of copper production; developing smarter analytics for improving crop yields; improving access to capital; and generally modernizing the Chilean economy the final 10 - 20% required to catch it up with the connected world represents enormous opportunity.
I sincerely hope that entrepreneurs like Gabriel can make the connections requried to activate his idea. I sincerely hope that consultants like Aldo can move beyond defining problems and get to solving them. And I sincerely hope to visit Chile again and experience that progress.