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Good practice Imported

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

Chile · Santiago · See the Chile profile · See the Santiago profile

Evidence: Quasi-experimental Top 10% 86/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Chile's CORFO built the world's first public accelerator in 2010, drawing 5,000+ applications a year and funding 240+ startups; a 2010–12 evaluation found only 24% of foreign grantees actually located in Chile, with survival below CORFO's own domestic seed programme.

5,000+ applications/year
Annual applications by mid-2010s (mid-2010s)
240+ projects/year
Projects funded annually by mid-2010s (mid-2010s)
83 %
Chilean entrepreneurs based in Chile after programme (2010-2012 cohorts)
24 %
Foreign entrepreneurs based in Chile after programme (2010-2012 cohorts)
59 %
Foreign-founded companies operating outside Chile after programme (2010-2012 cohorts)
26 US$ million
Combined funding raised by Chile-based cohort startups (2010-2012 cohorts)
72 US$ million
Combined funding raised by foreign-based cohort startups (2010-2012 cohorts)
37 %
Start-Up Chile participants (2010-2012) who began activities in Chile (2010-2012)
94 %
CORFO Seed Capital Program participants who began activities in Chile (comparison period)
Start-Up Chile — CORFO's Global Talent-Attraction Accelerator

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
CORFO (Corporación de Fomento de la Producción — Chilean Economic Development Agency)
Period
2010–present
Keywords
Startup acceleration, talent attraction, seed investment, entrepreneurship policy

Context

Start-Up Chile is a startup-acceleration and talent-attraction programme created by CORFO, Chile's state development agency, launched in 2010 as the world's first public business accelerator, offering foreign and local entrepreneurs seed capital, a one-year work visa, office space and incubation support in exchange for relocating operations to Chile for a fixed period.

Objectives

Attract global entrepreneurial talent to Chile and catalyse a domestic startup culture, using seed grants (originally $40,000, later plus an optional $120,000 non-refundable grant) as the incentive.

Activities

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.

Results

A WIPO-documented survey of 407 participants from the 2010-2012 cohorts (86 Chilean, 321 foreign) found 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. 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 business survival rates under the Seed Capital Program were more than double those of Start-Up Chile.

Conclusions

This is 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 (now a Harvard Business School case study). 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, and the programme 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.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M) — Seed grants of $40,000 per startup (later plus an optional $120,000 non-refundable grant for high-growth projects), funding 240+ projects per year at scale.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Launched 2010; restructured multiple times (2014 equity co-investment fund); 15 years of continuous operation to 2025.
Staffing & skills
CORFO (Corporacion de Fomento de la Produccion), programme management and mentor network

Conditions for success

  • Seed funding sized to be genuinely attractive to global founders
  • Fixed-period Chile-relocation requirement
  • Willingness to iterate incentive design based on evaluation findings

Common failure modes

  • Grant-based attraction without stronger retention incentives leads to most foreign founders leaving after the programme (59% operating outside Chile)
  • Survival and Chile-basing rates markedly lower than CORFO's own domestic Seed Capital Program

Where it fits

Governance type
national state development agency (CORFO)
Scale
national programme with international applicant pool
Income level
upper-middle/high-income country (Chile)

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

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