Start-Up Chile — CORFO's Global Talent-Attraction Accelerator

Start-Up Chile is a startup-acceleration and talent-attraction programme created by CORFO, Chile's state development agency, and launched in 2010 as the world's first public business accelerator. It offers foreign and local entrepreneurs seed capital — originally $40,000, later restructured to $40,000 in seed funding plus an optional $120,000 non-refundable grant for high-growth projects — along with a one-year work visa, office space and incubation support, in exchange for relocating operations to Chile for a fixed period. By the mid-2010s the programme drew over 5,000 applications a year and selected more than 240 projects annually, with over 80% of funded projects in information and communications technology.

A WIPO-documented survey of 407 participants from the 2010–2012 cohorts (86 Chilean, 321 foreign) found a genuine mixed record: 83% of Chilean entrepreneurs based their activity in Chile versus only 24% of foreign entrepreneurs, with 59% of foreign-founded companies operating outside Chile after the programme ended. Chile-based startups from the cohort raised a combined $26 million (96 of 149 companies, averaging $270,000 each) and averaged 6 employees, while foreign-based startups raised $72 million in aggregate but retained an average of only 2.9 workers inside Chile. The same evaluation found that only 37% of Start-Up Chile participants (2010–2012) began activities in Chile, compared with roughly 94% for CORFO's own domestic Seed Capital Program, and that business survival rates under the Seed Capital Program were more than double those of Start-Up Chile — a documented, independently reported shortfall in the programme's core talent-retention goal even as it succeeded in attracting global applicants and raising Chile's profile as a Latin American innovation hub (a Harvard Business School case study now covers the programme).

CORFO restructured the programme's incentives over time (higher non-refundable grants, an equity co-investment fund from 2014) partly in response to this retention gap. The model remains active and continues to be studied internationally as both a success in ecosystem-building and a cautionary case on the limits of grant-based talent attraction without stronger retention incentives.

Read the full analysis: https://www.wipo.int/en/web/wipo-magazine/articles/start-up-chile-38986