Business Incubator Series: Jean Boudeguer, Start-Up Chile — Santiago (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What entrepreneurs could expect to spend on living expenses while they stay in Chile?

Jean: That would depend on how you want to live. There’s an entrepreneur who lives in a normal apartment. He has a swimming pool on the top floor of the building. He’s probably paying $800 [a month]. You can live with less. You can live with more. On our site, we have that comparison of living expenses. Going out for dinner in a normal restaurant is about $20 per person. Renting an apartment would be between $600 and $800 for two people.

Irina: What else do you provide for entrepreneurs?

Jean: We have staff of around 10. We have a person dedicated only to the personal stuff of the entrepreneurs, to look after their living arrangements and their personal lives. We focus on the entrepreneurs’ having the best possible quality of life during their time here in Chile. Not only them, but their families, too. For example, we have an entrepreneur here who came with his whole family, wife and kids. The kids needed to go to school. We provided help with that.

We have another person in charge of following up with the teams. We don’t make a judgment of whether your project is good or bad. We follow up to check how you are progressing with your milestones. We have a person doing all of that follow up.

We have a person in charge of creating high-quality events with important people here, so our entrepreneurs can experience entrepreneurial environment. We have around 10 people working [on these things] right now. We are getting ready for the 100 new startups that will arrive in July.

Irina: Earlier you mentioned the technology you use to screen applicants. Do you use any other tech tools?

Jean: We do have a bespoke program for the follow up with the teams. That’s the software that CORFO uses; CORFO is the agency that we work for. They have a follow-up platform. That’s basically it. We use an internal CRM software. We are using our blog, which is also connected to CRM. Typical technology tools.

Irina: Do you have any formal lectures for entrepreneurs?

Jean: We don’t have a curriculum. We do give certain lectures to entrepreneurs: how to do business in Chile, how to incorporate in Chile as a business, everything. It’s not formal.

Irina: What are your metrics for success?

Jean: As I mentioned, the mission of this program is to create innovation and entrepreneurial hub in Latin America. We will see how it will go, but we are trying to attract 300 entrepreneurs per year until we get to 1,000.

When they are here, they are able to develop their projects and if they actually raise money with local venture capitalists, that would be a successful measure. If they leave their operations here, it is also a success. Leaving operations here means they will need to hire people.

We’re not asking them to stay, but one thing that we think might happen is that they will stay because Chile provides the platform for their going global.

Also, one of the key factors for us is international visibility. Entrepreneurs are writing on their blogs and helping us get a lot of visibility. We think that creating a pool of innovation and entrepreneurship has three steps: attracting people, or people moving to Chile; creating an entrepreneurial environment in Chile; and connecting that environment to the world. With this movement of people coming, staying and then going, we will see that this environment will flourish in the near future.

Irina: Would you talk about some entrepreneurs in the program?

Jean: Sure. The first project that arrived is called CruiseWise. These guys are from Stanford and originally from Israel and France. One has an MBA and the other has a master’s in computer science. They came here and developed a platform for cruises. It’s like Kayak.com, but specifically for cruises.

They worked for four months, creating the prototype. They advanced so quickly that in the fourth month, they decided to spend the last two months raising capital here in Chile. Then they went back to the U.S. to see how it goes. These guys are already back in California. They are in the process of raising money.

There’s another project called Junar. It’s [run by] two Argentinians who developed their platform in Chile. They already raised $1.2 million. They were launched in California at the LAUNCH conference in February 2011. These guys are providing structured and semantic information search.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Business Incubator Series: Jean Boudeguer, Start-Up Chile — Santiago
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