I studied in Chile, and it's a great country. The climate is similar to California, the people are great and the cost of living is pretty low. You'll need to know some Spanish to really get the most out of it, but most of the wealthy speak okay English.<p>On the business side, if you look at Chile's consumer websites (used cars, apartments, etc.) they're all pretty old-school 90's looking. There's definitely room for local and South American innovation.<p>Likewise, local software education is a little old school overall. This means that they need progressive devs and progressive devs can really benefit there. I see this program as trying to use this synergy.
More interesting information about Chile:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565375" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565375</a><p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570167" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570167</a><p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1604896" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1604896</a>
Even more so than the program itself which provides nominal funding is the message this sends. Here is a country that welcomes entrepreneurs and will go out of their way to make their country a good place to do business. Their goals are also reasonable - they expect the company to do $100,000US in sales once running. They are not expecting $20 million US out of the gate like the fanciful schemes of other similar programs where those in power are subsequently disappointed and embark on a program of confiscation.
Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question but : are smartphones ( iPhone/Blackberry/Android...) popular in Chile ? It could be useful to know for entrepreneurs targeting mobile products.
The program seems to be underway:<p><a href="http://startupchile.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/california-startup-weekend-valley-visits/" rel="nofollow">http://startupchile.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/california-star...</a><p>"The next day we had a typical asado with other Chileans living in the Bay Area, and meanwhile acquainted them with the first of the program’s selected entrepreneurs: Israeli-born Stanford MBA Amit Aharoni, and Stanford Computer Scientist Nicolas Meunier from France."