Government-supported startup accelerator Start-Up Chile is holding its third Demo Day today, and has announced a few tweaks to its modus operandi.
As a matter of fact, the organization is partnering with US social entrepreneurship event Common Pitch, which is for the very first time coming to Latin America. The first edition of Common Pitch Chile will feature high-profile speakers such as Al Gore and David Cohen, as well as musicians like Devendra Banhart. From a startup perspective, this partnership also represents an opportunity for Start-Up Chile’s entrepreneurs to compete for a cash award – and extra attention.
Despite these novelties, the core focus of Start-Up Chile Demo Day remains unchanged, and it will give 20 graduating teams the opportunity to pitch their startups in front of national and international entrepreneurs and investors.
You may have recognized some names on the above list, such as Startup World: Chile winner, Edoome, and second-screen app ComparTeVe.
As you may remember, Start-Up Chile hosted its first Demo Day in May 2012. Starting from the second edition, which we attended last August, it decided that Demo Days would now be surrounded by one full week of workshops and panels around entrepreneurship.
Nicknamed as ‘SUPWeek’, the event series is taking place again around its third Demo Day, and features guest speakers such as I/O Ventures co-founder Paul Bragiel, NEOS founder Allan Jarry and Microsoft Latam’s Director of Technology, Developers & Platform, Eduardo Mangarelli.
While the pitching session showcases Start-Up Chile’s fourth generation of startups, today is also the day on which Start-Up Chile will communicate the application results for its sixth funding round during a live-cam session. So far, the program has supported five generations of entrepreneurs, who formed 497 early-stage startups coming from 37 countries. All of them received a one-year visa and a $40k grant delivered through expense reimbursements.
By developing these startups, Chile hopes to position itself as Latin America’s tech entrepreneurship hub, and today’s Demo Day is hosted in partnership with CONTACTChile, the country’s program to internationalize innovation.
➤ Demo Day Start-Up Chile (Live stream)
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