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Our startup has recently been accepted into StartupChile (SUP).

If you don't know, they offer a 40K grant to launch over 6 months in Chile without claiming any equity in your project. Our team will likely accept, but I am concerned about the fine print, specifically spending caps and reimbursements.

Does anyone have any experience with SUP they could share?

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Thoughts from the HN crowd: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3810821 – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Apr 11 '12 at 22:03

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First of all, congratulations on being accepted! Maybe we'll see each other in a couple months, we've been considering applying in a future round. :)

I've talked with several people there about this and other topics. From what I hear, you should be taking around ~5K per person to support the first two months, while things get set up for the reimbursements. After that, it's just a matter of keeping receipts of everything and they'll reimburse in about 15 days time.

Important things:

  • when renting a place, you need to pay in advance so that's a huge bill right at the start which takes a while to be reimbursed
  • plane tickets receipts should be in the name of the person traveling, NOT the company. They reimburse you personally.
  • I think the topic above applies to all expenses. I'm not absolutely sure, so check the T&C and talk to the staff.

As for accepting, I think you definitely should. Every company I've seen going to Startup Chile has grown tremendously and really made a profit (both money & value) from going. Don't throw away the opportunity.

Hope that helps!

Tomé Duarte

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Thanks for the excellent feedback. It appears SUP is still adjusting to the expansion of the program and much of their documentation is contradictory and/or ambiguous and the staff seems overloaded. Regardless, I think you're right in concluding that it's too good to pass up. – Laramie Nov 6 '11 at 22:09
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Congratulations Laramie. I'd advise looking through SUP's directory of accepted startups, and contacting some of the founders directly: http://www.startupchile.org/theshow/projects/

These are the people who will best be able to answer your questions.

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Thanks Jay. I've done so and gotten some tremendous feedback, but SUP tends to keep a tight reign on their image, and rightly so. I was hoping to go outside the circle and get a potentially more objective perspective. – Laramie Nov 8 '11 at 22:33

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