If you are a startup game dev company, consider applying for Startup Chile!

edited in General
(I mentioned this program in another thread, and thought I would share some of our experience of it).

Startup Chile is a program funded by the Chilean government to promote a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Chile in order to give it an long-living economic boost. Three times a year they accept about 100 startups (less than 2 years old) from around the world (1/3 from Chile) to take part. This includes about R400 000 in equity-free funding, a lot of exposure to "entrepreneurial activities" (talks and the like), exposure to investors, and so on. The next round opens in September, but it's worth doing a few things now if you want to apply. (More info here: http://www.startupchile.org/application-is-closed).

Me and Jonothan ( @jsgbailey) got in and have been living In Chile since November. We had an amazing experience (it is almost at an end now), and if you can take the opportunity, I can highly recommend it.

As you know, getting funding for game development can be quite hard, and it is refreshing that this program does include game and game-related companies. In our group there were two game companies (one a gamification), two game dev tool companies (including us), and one game advertising company. So my first point is: it is possible.

Is it worth it?

Most definitely!

Santiago is not a game development hub, but this does not mean you cannot get some serious advantages from being in the program.

First, you actually get money to work full-time on your product for six months. If you have to, like we had to, do contract work to fund your development, you will realize how wonderful this is.

Second, you do get to meet wonderful people. It's extremely valuable to get so much intense feedback and insight into your business, and have a contact base from all over the world afterwards. One of the things that I found especially helpful was stories about how people deal with their "internal affairs" - the ins and out of working with friends, dealing with conflict, defining roles and so on. You get to share fears, dealing with failures (and successes!). We made some good friends here.

Third, you get to learn some more business-centric stuff. In this regard it is actually useful that so few other startups are game development companies, because you get to learn more than the trendy business articles you see on Gamasutra nowadays. We changed our own thinking quite a bit as a result of this.

Fourth (getting to the personal benefits now) you get to live in another country and immerse yourself in the culture. Even after six months we still experience things that amaze and bewilder us! Things work differently; people think differently. (It is not uncommon to go for dinner at 11, to a club at 2, wake up at 9, go for a nap at 3). The shops are organised differently. It is easy to buy some bizarre things and hard to buy thing we think are essentials. Shops are open and close quite randomly despite advertised business hours even in central city! It's a different life, and give you a different perspective of how things are and should be.

Fifth, you get to learn (a version of*) Spanish! Most people here don't speak English, and to get by you need at least a minimal amount. 400 000 000 people speak Spanish, and for English speakers it is one of the easiest languages to learn.

Sixth, you get to meet some great people. Passionate, dramatic, unhurried, in all the shades of course. At times delightfully perplexing. (We did quite a bit of dating on this side. It's a humbling lesson in communication - not only trying to work out what the person is trying to say, and really mean, but also trying to anticipate all the ways the person can misunderstand you...it is crazy how easy misunderstandings creep in, and how often you just cannot understand a person's strange behavior!)

Seventh, you get a chance to see (at least some) of South America. Santiago is 1-2 hours away from the mountains on the one side and the ocean on the other. You can take a bus to Mendoza in Argentina, or a plane to Brazil or Peru. (Of course, your ability to travel depends on how much work you need to do and how much money you have... we couldn't do too much, but we did some!)

For me, the experience was a growing one, it changed me fundamentally.

If you think of applying, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Don't be intimidated by the application process!

You can bring a spouse and children. (And many people do.)

The age-range varies greatly. Most people are on the younger side, but it goes all the way up.

Plan to stay at least one month longer than the official end date. This is because:

Know that things can go wrong! You do get the funding, but not necessarily at the promised time. In our case there was a significant delay in the second half (we got it one week before the program was supposed to end) and we had to apply for an extension. We also had to dip into our personal funds during this time, and ended up not being able to pay rent one month (we did pay eventually). And make sure you have some cash available especially at the beginning. And you will get robbed, and you will loose your bank card many times (the ATMs work differently, and you get robbed) so plan to have somebody that can get you new South African bank cards. Between us we came with 5 cards... at one stage we had 1 left, with no way to get another. It was extremely stressful!

Practice Spanish before you go! The first two months is incredibly intense, you won't get time for much else than settling in and working on your startup.

The contract is in one of the founders' personal names, this means all your expenditure must be from an account that is in his or her name. You may need to restructure your finances a bit to make things easier. This may include opening an extra bank account in SA before you come.

Living expenses are roughly double here. (This was not reflected in our online research before we came; that gave us the idea that things cost roughly the same). Food is especially expensive, so keep that in mind when looking at how feasible it is. Business things are roughly the same (things such as printing, labour, etc.).

If anyone has questions, please ask away. And if you want to apply and want some help with the application, just drop one of us a mail; we'd be happy to help!

Here are some pics of our adventures: http://gamelogicza.tumblr.com/ (the photo's get progressively worse as we had to downgrade our phones as we kept loosing them... between us we lost four phones since we came :---/)

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention how vibrant the game developers are here. There are lots! And they love game development! We have about 70 people attend our dev meetups (yes, can you believe it they did not have a regular one before!) So even though it's not quite the hub, and they don't have quite the success stories we have had, there are many more people interested to you can have access to. (Partly because the city is so big, and partly because almost half the country live in it! So everything is very concentrated). See https://www.facebook.com/groups/GameDevSantiago/?ref=bookmarks to get a bit of a feel for it.

Comments

  • Here are some pics of our adventures: http://gamelogicza.tumblr.com/ (the photo's get progressively worse as we had to downgrade our phones as we kept loosing them... between us we lost four phones since we came :---/)
    Lost or stolen? Just wondering :D
  • mattbenic said:
    Here are some pics of our adventures: http://gamelogicza.tumblr.com/ (the photo's get progressively worse as we had to downgrade our phones as we kept loosing them... between us we lost four phones since we came :---/)
    Lost or stolen? Just wondering :D
    Two phones were forgotten in a place, and then not found, one was actually robbed, and one unknown. You have to be quite careful: you can really get your bag stolen in a fancy restaurant in a big mall while you are at the table; Starbucks have special things that you can use to secure you bag at the table. But you are 10 (!) times more likely to get murdered in South Africa than in Chile, so it's still in that sense safer.
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