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

Big data, big news from Chile’s InstaGIS…they’re headed to 500 startups!

Chile’s InstaGIS cutting-edge big-data-geo-visualization-solution checks all the cool factor boxes. As a result they can now set their next destination as 500 startups. InstaGIS along with Floqq are two Chilean based startups that have been accepted into Batch 6 of the highly regarded accelerator.

InstaGIS is a geographic information system that allows retail stores to target their audiences. Translation they make super fancy interactive infographics that can be used by companies for market research and business intelligence to monitor what is happening in a specific geographic area.

And whether InstaGIS is used in a competitive retail environment such as Chile where there is not critical mass yet 2,500 people are waiting in line 24 hours for the doors of the newly launched H&M to open; or 5,000 miles away in Washington, DC which has a very affluent population but lacks high end retailers so Andi Joseph from the Golden Triangle BID is globetrotting trying to fill that void – obviously you can already see a few different ways companies could rock their software.

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Floqq joins 500 Startups

Less than one week ago we published a post about Floqq, Latin America’s largest online Spanish language course catalog. And 3 weeks ago for our ‘AndesBeat Start-Up Chile Demo Day Picks‘, we identified Floqq as 1 of the 2 startups that were replicating a proven business model- referring to them as the ‘Udemy of South America’.

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Chile’s Startup Week in Review….

Gran Chile startup founders and tech entrepreneurs! I am so proud of you. Indeed you have come along way since January 12, 2012. (Note: The week’s highlights and new contest launches follow intro).

I see you are taking your place in the world not as merely startup founders and tech entrepreneurs from Chile, but as rising global startup thought leaders launching out of Latin America; and the next generation of Angels/VC founders and philanthropists in the making.

Over recent weeks, you have been crushing all the misconceptions and beliefs that are often heard among entrepreneurial and startup circles in Latin America.

Startups and tech entrepreneurs – here’s how you are blowing IT up and making big things happen in (and for) Chile:

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