Recently at the World Entrepreneurship Forum in Lyon, France, I came across a unique model for fostering entrepreneurship. I met Nicolas Shea, a businessman-turned-bureaucrat in the Chilean government who described to me what they are doing in Chile to attract entrepreneurs. The government issues an Entrepreneur Visa to foreigners who are interested in setting up a business in Chile. The visa is good for an initial period of one year, and comes with $40,000.
Yes. You read that right. The Chilean government pays you for the visa. You get the money. It is not a loan. You don't even have to give them equity in your company. The money is yours to use for putting together a start-up in Chile.
How many companies have you funded? I asked Nicolas. Five hundred, he replied.
That is twenty million dollars spent - how does your government feel about it? I asked.
Nicolas Shea's answer was thought-provoking. That is a small sum, he said, to attract the best of talent from all over the world. We screen thousands of business plans to pick a hundred every quarter. We have some of the world's most exciting technology start-ups coming up in Chile, thanks to this program. How else were we going to get talent from Stanford and other elite institutions? We hope some of these start-ups get to a stage of raising money. Even if two of them raise $10M each, we have our $20M back in Chile. And imagine the way in which it helps our economy. Visualize the ecosystem we are creating.
He has a point. A big one. If you want to have a Route 128 or a Silicon Valley in your country, you have to do something crazy, something unique - like Startup Chile. Here is a link to a recent article in The Economist on Startup Chile. What do you think about the idea?
Yes. You read that right. The Chilean government pays you for the visa. You get the money. It is not a loan. You don't even have to give them equity in your company. The money is yours to use for putting together a start-up in Chile.
How many companies have you funded? I asked Nicolas. Five hundred, he replied.
That is twenty million dollars spent - how does your government feel about it? I asked.
He has a point. A big one. If you want to have a Route 128 or a Silicon Valley in your country, you have to do something crazy, something unique - like Startup Chile. Here is a link to a recent article in The Economist on Startup Chile. What do you think about the idea?
