Vicente Gracia connects with U-Start CEO and now leads U-Start in Chile

Vicente Gracia learned about the hardships of being an entrepreneur after having spent some time working in an entrepreneurial online business in South Africa.

Just before graduating of a master’s degree in a Swedish Entrepreneurship School he learned about U-Start and the work they do for helping entrepreneurs and start-ups connect with investors, which led him to contact U-Start’s CEO where he was presented with the opportunity to help Chilean businesses in getting investors for their projects. Continue reading

World Startup Report: 16 Countries and Counting

Editors note: This guest post comes courtesy of Bowei Gai, founder of World Startup Report.
Bowei sold CardMunch to LinkedIn in 2011.
After releasing The China Startup Report and generating more than 125K views, he started a 9-month long trip in January 2013 to research the world’s startup ecosystems (across 29 countries and 36 cities).

He visited Chile between March 7th – 10th and I supported his work by setting up an agenda to connect the chilean community (founders and investors) with him.

If you’re planning a trip to explore Chile’s market and networks, make sure to:
1) download our new ‘Making it happen in Chile‘ market entry handbook series 
and
2) check in with AndesBeat.

A million thanks to the World Startup Report team, sponsors, and volunteers around the world for making this trip a reality. It’s been an amazing 6 months. Here’s a recap of what I’ve learned on the road. Continue reading

Chile’s entrepreneur week in review, ending May 3, 2013

So much has been happening in Chile over the past week, it’s been hard to keep up with all the activity going on.  Hence, why I thought in case you missed something, it might be easier just to sum up some of the stories we’ve been following here at AndesBeat.

Photo at left, participant sleeping at Geek Fantasy Camp, the popular overnight sleepover where startups launch their venture.

So what’s new(s) in Chile’s entrepreneur scene? Here you have it!:

  • One day incorporation now available in Chile
  • National Entrepreneurship Day in Chile
  • Floqq gets selected for 500 Startups
  • Meet LatAm brings top international speakers
  • Geek Fantasy Camp attracts 600 applicants
  • Waze, Chilean Government develop apps for public transportation
  • 80% of seats booked for StarTech Conference (Oct 2013)
  • Video Games Chile selects new board members
  • AndesBeat new Chile market entry handbook

Continue reading

Studying and doing business at the same time – Anyone can do it?!

Editor’s note :
Alan Earle, currently 25 years old and Manga Corta founder, shares with us his thoughts about starting a business and studying at the same time. 

His conclusion:
It is possible and definitely recommendable.

Most of you probably didn’t know anything about Alan Earle and I must admit that I, personally, didn’t either.

But now I can say that I honestly respect his strength and optimism, his eagerness of doing his own thing and by doing so, encouraging others to follow him! How? Well, find out! Continue reading

Meet AndesMade Advisor: Mike Michalowicz

AndesBeat is proud to announce Mike Michalowicz (pronounced mi-cal-O-wits) as the next confirmed mentor for AndesMade. (You can follow our running list with  previous named mentors here!)

Mike will be working with our international advisory team for our forthcoming AndesMade immersion based initiative to support Chilean startup founders and tech entrepreneurs with rapid prototyping and quickly getting their ideas into the marketplace with their bootstrapping mode on.

Being that we are going to be bootstrapping (sin shoelaces), we had to flip through our ‘Golden Rolodex’ and find at least one accomplished bootstrapper for our advisory team.

Enter Mike Michalowicz aka ‘The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur’ who started his first business at the age of 24. With no experience, no contacts and no savings he systematically bootstrapped a multi-million dollar business. Then he did it again. And again. He sold his first company to private investors and sold his second company to a Fortune 500.

Continue reading

Made in Chile: Hip ‘Maker Space’ set to launch in Santiago

Back in the late 1990’s as we began to launch into the Age of Information I wondered if information overload would kick in and shift us towards the Creative Age to help us process, curate, visualize and package all this information in other RIGHT BRAIN formats. And are we not seeing this now (ohhhhh, 14 years later, :-P) with the emergence of DESIGN along with data visualization and gamification crossing over into everything?

Following ‘developing countries’, I then wondered if the Creative Age, along with the rise of the now ’emerging markets’ would shift us back from building for a novelty based virtual world to building for a needs based real world thus resulting in the Age of Micro Manufacturing,  where everything would be made to order (locally/regionally) and produced in small volume on a needs basis.

In the U.S. this emerging group of creative-tech inventor types who are the ‘early adopters’ and ‘pioneers’ playing in this micro ecosystem has been affectionately branded ‘Makers’…and damn it, they are so gosh darn special to us and the renaissance of manufacturing in the U.S. that we even gave them their own ‘festival‘!

And maybe in the future we would see the ‘creators’ of these products receive a royalty/licensing fee  (for sustainability and intellectual property) every time their product gets resold in the marketplace which would be tracked via an RFID (Radio-frequency identification) tag.

Continue reading