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Start-Up Chile Application Process Opens with 100 Vacancies Available

8 February 2011

(Start-Up Chile) February 8, 2011After opening its doors to 23 teams of foreign entrepreneurs in 2010, Start-Up Chile announces the aperture of the 2011 application process, planning to select up to 100 applicants during the year’s first trimester. The goal for the year, as a whole, is to attract up to 300 entrepreneurs.

The process will commence on the 15th of February and is open to entrepreneurs of all nationalities currently residing outside of Chile (including Chileans living abroad).

Criteria the applicants will be judged on include:

  • Quality of talent and commitment of the founding team members,
  • International market potential of the project, and
  • Value of the applicant’s affiliated networks that will be injected into the Chilean entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Judges determining the scoring of said criteria will be industry experts, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs with strong backgrounds in executing and advising startups.

Applications must be submitted via the Start-Up Chile website, www.startupchile.org/apply, where further information regarding application and participation in the program can be also be found. Submitted items must be completed in English by only one applicant per startup (who will then act as the legal beneficiary of the $40,000 subsidy).

The submission deadline will be on March 15th, 2011, judging will begin on March 22th, and approved applicants will be advised of their status on the 21st of April, 2011. To achieve the goal of attracting up to 300 approved projects, two other application processes will be opened throughout the duration of 2011.

About Start-Up Chile
Start-Up Chile is a program of the Chilean Government, created by the Ministry of Economy and executed by CORFO/InnovaChile, that seeks to attract early-phase entrepreneurs to bootstrap their businesses in Chile. In line with the Government’s goal of converting Chile into the innovation and entrepreneurship hub of Latin America, the program plans to bring 1,000 projects to Chile by 2014.

During the six months the participants must be in Chile, for which they receive a 1-year working visa, the objective is to raise capital, hire talent, create networks, and to start their businesses from Chile while interacting fully with the local entrepreneurship ecosystem.

The program, unique in the world, is the ideal opportunity for bootstrappers to receive funding without ceding equity while utilizing one of the strongest Latin American economies as their launching/development platform. Start-Up Chile has been featured in The Economist, BusinessWeek, TechCrunch, and Forbes, among others.

Start-Up Chile Pilot Phase
23 teams arrived to Chile in 2010 to participate in Start-Up Chile’s pilot phase representing 14 nations: Israel, France, Argentina, Costa Rica, Uruguay, United States, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Canada, China, Ireland, and South Africa.

In only a few months, results are already concrete. The founders of Junar, a platform that allows users to easily find and use data, raised $1.2 million USD in December, 2010, from Chilean, Costa Rican, and Argentinean venture capital firms and Angel Investors. Numote, a team headed by Vijay Kailas and Robert Balousek, recently garnered the prestigious title of Popular Choice Award in the Samsung Free TV Challenge.

Another early success has been the team, Entrustet–a pair of two young entrepreneurs from the University of Wisconsin who have created a service to protect digital assets (email, Facebook, etc.) for when internet users pass away. Their project is known worldwide and has captured the attention of diverse communication outlets such as The New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, and Mashable.

For more information about the Start-Up Chile experience, please visit www.startupchile.org