Business Incubator Series: Jean Boudeguer, Start-Up Chile – Santiago (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Do you have any entrepreneurs from the U.S.?

Jean: We have people from Wisconsin, California, and Utah. We’re trying to attract the best entrepreneurs from around the world. We’re not only looking for high-tech entrepreneurs, we’re looking for any entrepreneur who can see an opportunity here in Chile. We’re looking for mining, agriculture – the possibilities are endless.

Irina: How do you process your applications?

Jean: We’re using the Younoodle.com service. They provide not only the online application platform but also a screening platform. They hire judges, and each judge is given a specific number of projects. Each project will be evaluated three times. We will select up to 100 entrepreneurs in the final round. I say up to because we don’t want to select 100 entrepreneurs just to [fulfill a quota]. We have space for up to 100 entrepreneurs.

If there are 200 great projects, that would be great, but the possibility of having 200 great projects in one round would be probably lower than having 100 or just 50. We’re trying to select the best. The number varies around 100. The most important thing is not the number but the quality of the applicants. That’s pretty much how the process will be done.

Irina: This happens three times a year?

Jean: Yes. The next one will start the first week of July 2011. I think the last one will be in October 2011.

Irina: Can entrepreneurs who aren’t chosen apply again?

Jean: Yes. If they are rejected, they can apply again. There’s no limit how many times  you can apply. If you are selected, you can decide when you want to arrive. For example, if you’re selected in the July, you can arrive in October or you can arrive in January 2012. If you are rejected, you can always apply again.

Irina: How do you screen applicants?

Jean: We have selection criteria as most of the business plan competitions have. We have the venture capital way of looking at projects.

We see the person. We see the team, what great things they’ve done so far. They probably attended university, the common stuff. The other thing we see is the actual project. What problem are they trying to solve? Is there a market for it? How big is the market?

Finally, we’re looking for people who can inject networks into our ecosystem. We’re asking for letters of recommendation. Chile will connect to the world through the networks it is providing. So, we would like to know what are their networks. So, we have these three criteria in our selection process, [the people, the project and their networks].

Irina: Once you accept a company, what’s the next step?

Jean: We send them an invitation letter. With that invitation letter, they can get a one-year working visa for themselves and for their families. We will help them to get a bank account and a mobile number. We provide office space. The time that they spend, from arriving in Chile to actually working on their project, we would like that to be less than a week. We start working with them as soon as they arrive, connecting them with people that we think will add value to their projects, their mentors, and, also, giving them the money.

Irina: Are they responsible for their own living expenses, once you give them $40,000?

Jean: The easiest way of getting the money is by reimbursement. We help them get housing. The entrepreneurs who are already living in Chile have great contacts and great tips on where to live, where not to live. If you have a family, you would like to live in a certain place. If you’re a young entrepreneur, you would want to live in another place.

If they want, they can go outside the city and work in any part of the country. They can use the money for human resources, hiring people, or in operations for buying licenses, software or maybe they need some service from a company or something like that. They can also buy more tangible stuff like computers.

We think of that $40,000 as seed funding. They probably won’t be able to do a lot with $40,000. What we want them to do is try to add as much value as they can in those six months with those $40,000 and with the contacts we’re providing so that they can validate their business models here and go back and sell their businesses at a higher value.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Business Incubator Series: Jean Boudeguer, Start-Up Chile - Santiago
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