Publibee.com, Aventones, Ateneo Digital, and Printfor.me‘s CEOs pitched in front of the entire Board of Directors that heads Simplycit– the organization will choose two of the startups for a medium-term investment. Ortuzar adds: “Our investment will be related to the project’s potential contribution within our company, but varies between USD$10 and $50k.” The capital is in exchange for 3-6% of the company.

The selected entrepreneurs will have open doors to Simplycit’s various channels, will be invited give presentations to the company’s clients, and will be provided with work space and trade agreements on future projects.

Cristina Palacios, the CEO of Aventones, left the pitch session saying, “I think they can be a great strategic partner for ideas. They have broad business knowledge and can definitely help us in the process of opening operations in Chile.” “The event was very interesting and productive. It was a phenomenal chance to go out and put in practice our pitches,” explained Miguel Molina, Ateneo Digital’s CEO.

Next week, Simplycit will announce the two winners– stay tuned!

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The three products they offer as a package fully comply with the curriculum proposed by Chile’s MINEDUC (Ministerio de Educación) and are complimented by knowledge and abilities that the SIMCE (Sistema de Medición de la Calidad de de Educación) requires in the areas of mathematics and language all while incentivizing the children to learn socially and informally, developing their creative capacities.

According to AgentPiggy’s founder, Pablo Ambram, schoolchildren normally “use internet and computers in their schools and homes as purely entertainment mediums, but not as academic tools. We’re hoping to break that trend and show kids that they can use the internet to its maximum potential in order to gather knowledge.”

Currently, the three companies are participating in Chile’s Salon International de Educación (Oct. 6+7) to show how their products can be integrated into classrooms like they’ve already accomplished in a handfull of schools that use their services internationally.

Here, they share their experience piloting the package in Colegio Araucana in Puente Alto, a Santiagüan municipality:

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Te pito o te henua is the original Polynesian name of Easter Island, meaning “the navel of the land” or “the earth’s bellybutton.” The island, one of Chile’s special territories, is considered to be the most remote inhabited island in the world, with a population of only 5,000 people, and with a rich history speckled by the moai sculptures that mark its picturesque landscape.

A UNESCO World Heritage site, Rapa Nui (Easter Island’s Polynesian name) acted as the breathtaking backdrop to Start-Up Chile’s most adventurous meetup to date. Approximately 10 of the program’s participants traveled together to the island to vacation and to co-host a meetup with the Island’s Chamber of Tourism and local Rapa Nui entrepreneurs. Clara Vieira, one of Leafer’s founders and organizers of the meetup, told us that “the meetup was amazing! It was the best meetup we’ve had since we came to Chile– everyone was happy and it was a privilege to exchange with the local people.”

Clara and her co-founder, Andreas, were struck by both the majestic simplicity of the island and the utility that the product they’re developing in Start-Up Chile could have for the local community saying, “Leafer will help them– its a communication tool and the island really needs to communicate to the outside because its really isolated out here. They believe in this island.”

Reactions to the Rapa Nui experience were similar among nearly all Start-Up Chile entrepreneurs who commented that “Easter Island is so untouched by the typical tourism amenities. Because there are so few people here, it feels like LOST sometimes” (Marshall Haas), and “We’re on Rapa Nui/Easter Island/Isla de Pascua building our first guide! Travel for work. Gotta love it!” (Richard Yang).

If you’re interested in setting up a Start-Up Chile meetup in an unconventional location, please contact us at info@startupchile.org.

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The purpose of the course, denominated DEPE (De Emprendedores Para Emprendedores // For Entrepreneurs By Entrepreneurs), was to give participating students a real perspective of starting a business, give them the confidence to become entrepreneurs and face the fear, failure, difficulties and successes of entrepreneurship. Students will also have the opportunity to learn how to take an idea and turn it into a business model, to participate in real-life entrepreneurship activities and discussions about business ethics, learn about ways of publicizing their products, among others.

Now, they plan to grandly scale up the course with current Start-Up Chile participants, taking it to various Universities from North of South of Chile. Currently, they are securing deals with local universities in Santiago, Viña del Mar, Valparaiso, La Serena, Coquimbo, and Antofagasta.

If you are interested in taking part in this course, please contact the DEPE team by clicking though this link.

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Participating in international film festivals is an essential part of El Teatro’s collaboration with filmmakers and industry professionals as they are working to provide filmmakers greater access to theaters and audiences.  El Teatro offers carefully curated filmed entertainment, including feature films, short films, documentaries and experimental interactive films from Chile and around the world.  El Teatro also provides a platform  for people to discuss, collaborate, and socialize around these events while emphasizing the work of local filmmakers and supporting a thriving film-loving community.

In seventh annual film festival, producers, directors, film critics, and actors will converge with audiences and gather around the most recent and important local and international productions, giving Santiago and the country a unique instance full of quality and currency. The festival features two film competitions: international, including movies from around the world, and a Chilean film competition, featuring the most recent local productions.

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The startups that attended the breakfast included Taggify, Buffr, Ethonova, VOZ, Wedoist, StartBull, Tecla Colorida, Limk, visualNACert, and LEAFER– all representing different nations.

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The startups (Ability, Tecla Colorida, StartBull, Ethonova, SQMOS, and Leafer) first visited the DUOC University where they presented the Start-Up Chile program and their individual projects in order to attract some of the students in the audience to come work for them. Bipin, the founder of Ability, lauded the meeting saying that “it was truly productive to connect with the University and its personnel– I hope this partnership continues to grow more productive.”

After lunch on the beach– Viña del Mar and Valparaíso are known for their eclectic ocean-side atmospheres (and growing entrepreneurship community)- they met with the incubator housed in the Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, one of Chile’s best engineering schools. The incubator, 3iE, currently has 32 startups incubating in their facilities and are looking to expand into the Start-Up Chile group. There, the Start-Up Chile entrepreneurs pitched to the incubators’ administrators in hopes of garnering a space in their institute.

Interested in becoming part of this community? The next application process will open on July 11th– be part of it!

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The accord will be constituted in two phases: during the first, a pre-study will be conducted to define early-stage educational research initiatives and will finance meetings in both Chile and Spain in order to define concrete actions and specific steps that the Universities will take together. The Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) has committed a €20,000 fund to complete these tasks. Depending on the results of the first phase, the second will be carried out with a €400,000 budget, contributed by the PUV during the 2013-2015 school years, focusing on innovation and research within various departments in the Chilean Universities.

Lucía comments with pride and contentedness that “[she] has brought to the Bío-Bío Region a project of 100% Spanish money in which the UPV has chosen to help Chilean Universities improve their alternative energy research facilities where they’ll construct a laboratory to carry-out the research that will amount to €400,000 in three years.” The university is embarking on a quest to transfer knowledge and implement their researched and developed energy efficiency results in other Iberoamerican zones around the world.

The CEO of Visual Nacert, she has been heavily involved in the Spanish entrepreneurship ecosystem having been a member of the Chamber of Commerce of Valencia and recognized with the Nova Award for Female Entrepreneurship in 2002.

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With three outstanding prizes for the top applicants, the application period will commence on the 25th of May and will close on June 24th, during which time applicants must fill out the forms that can be found here: http://www.uddventures.cl/greenstartup/, following the Terms and Conditions that can be found clicking on the same link.

The prizes for the top three winners include the following:

1. CLP$5million (approx USD$10k) in cash, co-incubated by the Fundación Chile and UDD, and a trip to Babson College, the top entrepreneurship University in the world (flights, transfers, and stay paid for).
2. CLP$3million (approx USD$6k) in cash, co-incubated by the Fundación Chile and UDD, and a trip to Babson College, the top entrepreneurship University in the world (flights, transfers, and stay paid for).
3. Co-incubation in the Fundación Chile and the UDD.

To apply, one must fill out the forms provided in the previous link and send them to: greenstartup@udd.cl. Good luck to all!

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Arriving to Chile in 2005, he began playing at a small roller hockey club while working in the banking industry. Despite a comfortable job and decent income, he felt increasingly unhappy performing monotonous tasks and not working towards his full potential. After three years, he quit and began working on a Click-to-Call application with a friend, thus resulting in the birth of his first startup: Medularis.

Medularis: The Ups and Downs of Entrepreneurship

As business partners, the pair continued developing Medularis and, within a few months, found an investor. With the money, they hired two employees and rented an office. Shockingly, the investor went back on his word and rescinded the money he’d offered, devastating Óscar and his partner, forcing them to fire their employees and pay all costs out of their own pockets. With no money to back their activities, they were forced back into the corporate world.

They kept running Medularis, eventually sealing a deal with a large client which subsequently attracted other users. Shortly, they became the number one Click-to-Call company in Chile, allowing them to quit their jobs once-and-for-all to manage the startup full time.

A year passed, and despite steady business, disagreements began to arise between the founders about where the startup was going, ultimately breaking Medularis apart at which time Óscar decided to sell the company to his now former partner.

Starting up from the Ground Up

Óscar, taking a breath of fresh air, began concocting a new startup.  “It initiated as a need to do something to get out of that painful situation. This new company was created with the idea of changing remote sales and the way that people work in call-centers. Arcaris was considered a global company from the beginning,” he states.

Soon they received a large investment, allowing them to develop a new product and nail important deals with major retail companies like Walmart, Chile, and “El Palacio de Hierro” in Mexico, among others– thus achieving profitability.

Looking to expand his company to the US and Canadian markets, he applied to Corfo’s new Global Connection program, seeking the opportunity to travel to Silicon Valley and incubate in the Plug and Play Tech Center, all expenses paid. On May 18^th, he was selected as one of nine startups to participate in the pilot program, saying: “Our team has worked really hard and our main goal is to validate our business in the global market. I think if we can get one client of the Fortune 500 list in the US we can validate our business everywhere. That’s our goal.”

Óscar Giraldo is proof that sometimes you must fail to succeed and, here, he shares his advice with budding entrepreneurs: “First of all, find investors that understand your business. We were desperate to raise capital and we accepted the first offer of someone who knew nothing the business. Secondly is to align the interest of the partners and try that the common goals be shared and don’t let that the communication between you is interrupted. And last, if you are trying to sell a new product let customers try it first, because that’s the customer that’s going to validate your product.”

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