POST VON DANIEL (Daniel schreibt in unregelmässigen Abständen exklusiv für SwissStartups):

So far, a lot of start-up stories and advices from Europe or from the US were published on this blog. But how is actually Latin America doing? What about entrepreneurs, business angel organizations or business incubators in Latin America?

These were exactly the kind of questions that attracted my interest and the reason why I chose to work for the business incubator Octantis (http://www.octantis.cl) of the renowned University Adolfo Ibañez in Santiago de Chile. My first four weeks here at Octantis have been tremendously interesting and I am glad to share some of these experiences with you on this blog!

Octantis acts as a networked incubator, rather than a facility provider. Entrepreneurs in a very early stage may apply at Octantis and present their business project. Once accepted, the entrepreneurs work in close collaboration with an executive from Octantis to further develop their business. For entrepreneurs that have an innovative value offer and high growth potential, Octantis offers access to the following: Customers, partners, smart money (angel investors), mentoring, serial entrepreneurs, peer-entrepreneurs, government grants, venture capital, and other necessary resources to grow their business.

I am primarily working on the execution of a program called Latinnovators, together with three people from Octantis: Gaston Salinas, Benjamin Werenfels and Ricardo Salas, a former Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur. Since Octantis is very well networked with other incubators in Latin America as well as organizations in the United States, the program offers an attractive internationalization program to high-growth start-ups from all over Latin America. Within three months you get trained and coached to present your business pitch in front of a venture audience in South Florida, which is organized in collaboration with several US organization such as the Gold Cost Venture Capital Association – doesn’t that sound great?

Which start-ups are incubated by Octantis? Latinnovators and Octantis have supported Surikat, a company that produces innovative x-ray protection shields for children and that has just raised 450K US$ of seed funding. Another successful company to be mentioned is the Brazilian company Container Consultants & Systems (CCS) that has been connected to US investors by Latinnovators. CCS offers an innovative process optimization software for the container shipping industry. Definitely two companies that are worth following!

Apart from the work at Octantis, I have to admit, Santiago is a very nice city to live in; the sea is very close, there are possibilities to do windsurfing and soon we can even go skiing! Furthermore, I got to know a lot of Chilean people that are extremely friendly and open-minded. Hereafter I would like to share a few impressions from Santiago. I’ll keep you posted with the start-up news from Chile!

Saludos desde Santiago

Daniel
(XING / LinkedIn)

This entry was posted on Montag, Juni 8th, 2009 at 06:24 and is filed under Startup Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.