I very much hope that this changes for the next cohort of participants.
1) Can you stay on there longer after the 6 months? What are the permit restrictions etc?
2) How many people actually came there with little or no product ready and actually built up while in Chile itself?
3) What are the odds that people who fall under the category of 2) got funding there itself?
What I am trying to understand is - is this something more worthwhile for those who already have something running and are maybe already talking to investors? Or is it also an equally good opportunity for people who've been playing with an idea and will have maybe 60% ready by the time they get there - but have no other investment other than their own money ?
Thanks a lot!
There is serious investment capital available. The point isn't that you're guaranteed to raise it. It's that if you can't get a higher valuation and better terms after six months of work and 40,000 in free outside investment then you probably don't have a company anyone will fund anyway.
(1) it's not technically true that you HAVE to spend the money before you get it reimbursed. We were given the option of purchasing insurance from the private sector to cover the government in the event of the funds being misallocated. None of the teams decided this was worth doing since it takes time to arrange the insurance and you end up paying the bank for holding the risk. Why waste that money?
(2) My understanding is that the $750 monthly salary mentioned here is the no-questions-asked limit on personal compensation for the individual whose name is on the contract. It was introduced to avoid having people need to keep track of all of their receipts. I believe you can justify more if you're willing to collect and submit those receipts (not worth the time), and you can always pay coworkers more by simply issuing a legal receipt for services rendered by them to your company. I didn't take salary myself but had no problems paying individual staff up to 2500 USD per month.
(3) It costs about 6000-8000 USD for a team to take advantage of the program since there are some things you can't get receipts for (housing deposits, miscellaneous cash expenses). Those expenses end up being front-loaded, but you are still looking at a 7x money multiplier on your matching funds (the funding works out to over 42000 USD once the exchange rate is figured in). Expecting teams to contribute 1000 of their own capital per month while pursuing their own business is not a high bar.