Brian McDonald -
While I missed the Skype session last week, I have been able to do a bit of research to better understand the start-up environment in Chile. Start-up environments, innovation centers, entrepreneurial hotbeds: these areas seem to arise from a combination of risk-taking culture, education, industrial necessity, history, governmental support, robust venture capital, and plain old luck. A question brewing, particularly here in CLE, is, if you are short in one or two of these areas (and this list is far from exhaustive, complete, or authoritative), can a town, city, state, country augment the strength of other elements to overcome any deficit? See Youngstown's vibrant incubator scene, see Ohio's Third Frontier, see various commercialization efforts arising in colleges and universities around this country.
To that list, add Latin America, and specifically, Chile.
The Chilean government has rolled out a program designed to position Chile as the "innovation and entrepreneurship hub of Latin America."
To do this, the Chilean government has established an accelerator program to which entrepreneurs may apply for funding in various rounds. In return, the entrepreneurs will move at least part of operations to Chile, and launch global operations.
Funding opportunities for the various phases of the program are considerably less impressive than similarly structured US programs.
The S-Factory is a pre-seed accelerator and offers $14K USD for accelerator-like services for 3 months.
Seed is an extension of the accelerator opportunity another 6 months combined with $30K USD in funding.
Scale - finally, the Scale round applies to top performing startups incorporated in Chile. Funding lays out at $86K USD, equity free.
The program started in 2010 with funding from CORFO, the Chilean Economic Development Agency. A goal at the time was to have incubated 1000 startups by 2014, with the ultimate goal of creating a $1B USD company. Applicants for the most recent class came from more than 60 countries and the program received 14 applications for every available spot.
So, Chile, like many other government agencies, is trying to legislate its community into a state of innovation by offering no-equity grants to entrepreneurs willing to locate within its borders. The deal certainly seems sweet, the money is there and the network seems to be in place. However, competition for this type of activity is high - if anything we could be in the midst of a startup bubble - how many accelerators can the world really support? And, once the companies exits the program, where will its next round of funding come from? The venture capital environment needs to be equally as robust as the accelerator environment for these projects to gain long-term, big profit traction.
The program is still going strong, they are accepting applications and seem to have a big staff working on the project.
Commercialization, innovation and entrepreneurship need to happen for a culture to thrive, or at least maintain its currency. The question remains; can programs like this really make it happen?
StartupChile.ORG
While I missed the Skype session last week, I have been able to do a bit of research to better understand the start-up environment in Chile. Start-up environments, innovation centers, entrepreneurial hotbeds: these areas seem to arise from a combination of risk-taking culture, education, industrial necessity, history, governmental support, robust venture capital, and plain old luck. A question brewing, particularly here in CLE, is, if you are short in one or two of these areas (and this list is far from exhaustive, complete, or authoritative), can a town, city, state, country augment the strength of other elements to overcome any deficit? See Youngstown's vibrant incubator scene, see Ohio's Third Frontier, see various commercialization efforts arising in colleges and universities around this country.
To that list, add Latin America, and specifically, Chile.
The Chilean government has rolled out a program designed to position Chile as the "innovation and entrepreneurship hub of Latin America."
To do this, the Chilean government has established an accelerator program to which entrepreneurs may apply for funding in various rounds. In return, the entrepreneurs will move at least part of operations to Chile, and launch global operations.
Funding opportunities for the various phases of the program are considerably less impressive than similarly structured US programs.
The S-Factory is a pre-seed accelerator and offers $14K USD for accelerator-like services for 3 months.
Seed is an extension of the accelerator opportunity another 6 months combined with $30K USD in funding.
Scale - finally, the Scale round applies to top performing startups incorporated in Chile. Funding lays out at $86K USD, equity free.
The program started in 2010 with funding from CORFO, the Chilean Economic Development Agency. A goal at the time was to have incubated 1000 startups by 2014, with the ultimate goal of creating a $1B USD company. Applicants for the most recent class came from more than 60 countries and the program received 14 applications for every available spot.
So, Chile, like many other government agencies, is trying to legislate its community into a state of innovation by offering no-equity grants to entrepreneurs willing to locate within its borders. The deal certainly seems sweet, the money is there and the network seems to be in place. However, competition for this type of activity is high - if anything we could be in the midst of a startup bubble - how many accelerators can the world really support? And, once the companies exits the program, where will its next round of funding come from? The venture capital environment needs to be equally as robust as the accelerator environment for these projects to gain long-term, big profit traction.
The program is still going strong, they are accepting applications and seem to have a big staff working on the project.
Commercialization, innovation and entrepreneurship need to happen for a culture to thrive, or at least maintain its currency. The question remains; can programs like this really make it happen?
StartupChile.ORG