(Start-Up Chile) April 26, 2011 – After receiving 329 applications during the one month application period, Start-Up Chile announces that 110 startup companies have been selected to participate in this year’s first round of the prestigious and world-recognized program. The goal is to select 300 startups by the end of the year.
Slated to arrive in June and July of 2011, the 110 chosen startups hail from 28 different countries representing a myriad of industries and many of the best educational institutions in the world including Harvard, MIT, Wharton, the London School of Economics, and Stanford. With the majority of the teams falling into the Ecommerce & Trade and the Enterprise Software & IT sectors, there are seven Social/NGO startups, five Biotech companies, and four Energy & Cleantech projects, among others.
Each participant passed through a series of rigorous evaluations conducted by venture capitalists, active entrepreneurs, and specific industry experts, as well as by the Committee of Entrepreneurship and Innovation that presides over The Chilean Economic Development Agency (Corfo) and it’s innovation branch, InnovaChile.
Jean Boudeguer, Start-Up Chile’s Executive Director, proclaims, “It is incredible that Start-Up Chile has been so well received in the international press which is something that has allowed us to attract excellent candidates.”
About Start-Up Chile
Start-Up Chile is a program created by the Chilean Government, initiated by the Ministry of Economy and is executed by Corfo/InnovaChile, that seeks to attract early-stage entrepreneurs to bootstrap their businesses in Chile. In line with the national 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 $40kUSD, a 1-year work visa, and access to local financial and social networks– the objective is to raise capital, hire talent, create networks, and to start their businesses from Chile while leveraging and interacting fully with the local entrepreneurship ecosystem.
The program, unique in the world, and catalyst of similar initiatives such as Startup America, Britain, and Greece, 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. For more information about the Start-Up Chile experience, please visit www.startupchile.org.