http://www.heritage.org/index/Ranking http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/#CountryResults
Getting 40k free money is reason enough to love the program and tolerate any bureaucracy. I mean, thanks to SUP Chile I could avoid spending lots of time looking for angels. In fact, I found the angel willing to invest almost the exact date I was accepted in SUP Chile, but thanks to SUP Chile I could avoid giving away equity and retain control at such an early stage.
So, I can't understand the complaints about bureaucracy or simple requests to spend time telling other people how is it to be an entrepreneur.
Yes, there is bureacracy and yes, sometimes you don't want to spend any time doing anything besides making progress in your project (I can understand the guy not wanting to go out of his appartment mentioned below) But c'mon... what's to not like about this deal. It's amazing, and I can't wait to be succesful and give back in any way I can regardless of the "RVA points", and prove that the SUP Chile way (trusting a team of hungry entrepreneurs and enabling them early) is one of the best ways in which a govermnent can estimulate entrepreneurship.
I have had an awesome experience in Chile and it has been one of my best decisions I have made. I have met my girlfriend here, I have scaled my business a lot, I have learned to surf, I have met amazing people from all around the world etc. On top of this, my company got $40.000 free money. The reimbursement process could be improved, but generally I did not have that much problems with it.
The problem I see is that people expect everything on a silver plate. They expect everything to be perfect. And of course, if you expect this you will be disappointed by Chile and Start-Up Chile - - because it isn't perfect and they have a long way to go, but they are trying hard to create a good platform for entrepreneurs and so far I think they are doing a great job (and a better job than most other countries in the world).
Maybe this lack of perspectives is culturally/experience bound. For me, my dad's story as an entrepreneur gives me perspective that I have it good and that I have much better opportunities than he ever had. My dad was an entrepreneur that quit his factory job to start his own business in his early 20's. He worked 12 hours pr. day at least. He worked and scaled his business for over 20 years - - to provide education for my siblings and good life for my family. Then the Bosnian war came and we lost it _all_. We had to relocate to Denmark, a country where we did not speak the language (and I can tell you that Danish isn't an easy language to learn). What did my dad do? He learned Danish and started another successful business in his late 40's.
So when I see people complain about the process of getting free money or that the chairs in the offices are bad then I laugh, because I think they have no perspective of what it takes to build a business, how hard building a business is for majority of people or what struggles other people have.