Business Incubator Series: Jean Boudeguer, Start-Up Chile – Santiago (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Are there any other interesting entrepreneurs in your program?

Jean: There’s H2020 created by Erika Anderson, who is an alumna of Singularity University in Moffett Field, California. [They collect data using their unique mobile phone-based survey. H2020’s Water Poverty Initiative seeks to “improve public knowledge about water problems in slums, increase the efficiency with which information is gathered and published, and stimulate implementation of scalable solutions.”]

Another company, Vendder,  provides e-commerce for small merchants. Yumit is a social network for gastronomy. We have several in the education industry. And, Aeterna Sol, is a solar energy company. Aeterna Sol’s co-founder, George Cadena, studied at Georgia Tech and then Caltech. He’s developing his project in Antofagasta in the north of Chile.

Irina: Any nontechnology startups?

Jean: We don’t want to be a technology incubator, but have a lot of IT companies because it’s easy for them to move from one part of the world to the other with just their computers. For example, H2020 is a social network company, but they use technology to do what they want to do. Aeterna Sol, a solar energy company, also uses technology extensively.

It would be complicated for us to move, for example, people working in the biotech industry. In the biotech industry, it would take a lot of time to develop a product, more than six months. And they would probably need more than $40,000 and need a lot more than office space and an Internet connection. We’re seeing that technology companies are more keen to move to Chile more than any other type of company.

Our goal is to diversify and not only by industry type, but also by regions of the world. We want to attract people from all over the world.

Irina: Do you plan to track what happens to these companies after they leave the program?

Jean: We have access to them. We usually do a follow-up with them while they are here in Chile. We do a follow-up once a month to see how things are going. We’re really happy when one of our startups raises money or gets clients. We want to know how they are, if there’s anything we can do to help. We want to stay connected to these companies.

Irina: How many companies have gotten large clients or raised money?

Jean: One raised money. One hasn’t closed, yet, but they have advanced a lot. There’s another that already has a lot of clients called Entrustet [a free, secure online service that helps you organize and prepare last wishes for your digital assets]. Another, Piccsy, has between 1 million and 1.5 million visitors a month. [Piccsy is an image bookmarking and sharing website founded by Canadian Daniel Eckler.]

Irina: Thank you, Jean. That has been an interesting talk, and I hope you get a lot of interest from entrepreneurs worldwide.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Business Incubator Series: Jean Boudeguer, Start-Up Chile - Santiago
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