Yesterday Pinterest acquired Livestar (a company that launched at TC Disrupt SF 2012, where AndesBeat organized the first ever Chilean Pavilion at the conference); Google released Keep (as a way to get into Evernote space, seems so), expanded its Google+ Platform Team, improved it’s Sports-Related Search Results and made Digg.com links disappear from Google’s search results. Plus yesterday also was the International Color and Happiness Day! What a day, huh?
But you know what? At the end of the day, that news wasn’t relevant at all in Chile’s start up world, because everyone’s attention was on Start-Up Chile Demo Day VIP and what could happen inside of Av. Providencia #229, Santiago, where 21 companies had the chance to flirt with investors for a few minutes to bring some funds and hit their next milestones.
If you weren’t invited to the event, no worries because I wasn’t invited either!
But we ain’t mad at you ‘event organizers’ – we know our responsibility to both our local and global start-up community and how much early stage start-ups rely on all the media they can get. (Thanks to everyone who reported from the inside and kept us informed)!
As I mentioned before, there were 21 companies, however, ‘KidBunch’, ‘Sprayable Energy’ and ‘The Writing Bees’ weren’t looking for funding, their goals were ‘exposure’ and ‘partnerships’ respectively. Long-story short, three companies immediately were off the map for investors.
Overview
Here’s the facts based on 18 companies that were looking for investments on this Demo Day session:
- 27.7% were Chilean founded companies: PostedIn, Khipu, BenchBanking, CranberryChic and AutoFact
- 50.0% were marketplaces based companies
- 11.1% hardware related
- $647,778 was the average investment request. $1,8M was the highest (Backyard Brains) and $120K the lowest (Khipu).
- Covered sectors: eCommerce, Energy, Travel, Education, Green, Medical, Finance, Fashion and Gaming
Now that you got an overall vision, the ones that got my attention, are newsworthy and I would follow (if i were an investor) are:
Rising Stars (16.6%)
- Diabeto (India)
- CranberryChic (Chile)
- Khipu (Chile)
*KidBunch should be listed here if they’re raising funds on this session.
Replicating Proven Business Model in South America (11.1%)
- Nubelo (Argentina) can become the oDesk or Elance of South America
- Floqq (Argentina) can become the Udemy of South America
Game-Changers (27.7%)
- Backyard Brains (USA)
- Sprayable Energy (USA)
- Diabeto (India)
- Razient (USA)
- Khipu (Chile)
Start-Up Chile Demo Day Portfolio
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