Guestpost by Diego Alcaino
Jack Dorsey recently visited Chile. He was impressed by the effectiveness to which Chileans put Twitter to use (after the earthquake that hit on February 26th, 2010) in building aid/recovery endeavors. Chilean entrepreneurs are quickly building on international platforms up top of their long experience in dealing with social innovation has turned them into resourceful-savvy entrepreneurs. There is a rising, untapped young group of talent that is strongly leveraging this expertise with an optimalengineering and computer science background.
The possible transformation when international ideas access local human capacity has a socioeconomic disruptive potential, and we are seeing this in action today. A month ago, Start-Up Chile www.startupchile.org, a new initiative by the Chilean Gov't was set in motion. This is a pilot program intending to attract world-class early stage entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Chile. The program will select 25 entrepreneurs and offer them a 1-yr resident visa, a $40k USD grant to cover expenses for six months and local network of support.
The main goal of the program is not to compete or replicate what has taken place in Silicon Valley, but to connect to it. The cross-fertilization that will occur when international entrepreneurs share experiences with Chilean entrepreneurs, could breed the next $1bn company or the next high-impact social innovation. This potential has already caught the attention of Sandbox www.sandbox-network.com, a global community of hand-selected young achievers and innovators, who have built up the energy by spreading the news with enthusiasm.
The awareness of how to access Chilean talent and entrepreneurs is spreading around the Californian valley. Julian Ugarte, a Chilean currently at Singularity University, has shared with his classmates the innovate experiences led by the Chilean NGO: Un Techo Para Chile. Sandbox entrepreneur Na'ama Moran stated "I already worked with Chilean engineers earlier this year, and know how great they are". Other companies replicating the model include Wanako Games (NYC), Bio Architecture Lab (Berkeley), Bling Nation (Palo Alto), Atakama Labs (SF), Entegris (Nasdaq: ENTG), InquiroGroup (Palo Alto) and Zappedy (SF).
If initiatives like Start-Up Chile can reach out globally, the entrepreneurial flame will be unleashed. There are 2.5m poverty stricken people living in Chile today, but this elusive challenge of overcoming poverty will finally give in, once the most coolest international entrepreneurial armies touches ground.
