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The ChileGlobal Ventures business accelerator was distinguished by Corfo as the best in the country according to a benchmark that analyzed data from the 13 incubators and accelerators available for startups in Chile.
The study evaluated several aspects in each institution, among which were entrepreneurs’ performance, results, value proposition, business model, and organizational development.
ChileGlobal Ventures Managing Director, Jamie Riggs, explains that “this is the result of a work we have been developing since we started the accelerator, nearly 10 years now. Our great distinctive attribute in the market is that as a result of having built over time a network of contacts and national and international partners, we have been able to provide taylor-made services for all the startups that join our portfolio, regardless their stage of growth. That, in addition to the great backing that comes from belonging to an institution such as Fundación Chile, which allows us to leverage the main players in the ecosystem, whether they are mentors, product and service providers, angel investors, large corporations, serial entrepreneurs; all of whom are part of our partner and contact network. We collaborate radically with the market and it shows in the startups’ results.”
The effort to boost the early-stage venture capital industry has been an effort of the entire community; as stated in the Corfo report, it is due to the overall positive results of the country’s accelerators and incubators. Globally, Chile’s early-stage startups increased their exports by 102% and managed to raise 11% more capital compared to 2018. In addition, they generated 18% more employment during 2019 compared to the previous year, a good sign for the industry.
ChileGlobal Ventures’ accelerator has 39 early-stage startups in its active portfolio, which have generated historic sales of over $40 million dollars and have raised nearly $10 million dollars in capital.
While these are currently in the acceleration process, there are over 93 startups that have gone through the ChileGlobal Ventures program, of which several are exit cases, including most notably Aventones. This startup was bought by the French multinational BlaBlaCar in 2015, becoming the first exit incubated entirely by ChileGlobal Ventures through a SSAF-i fund from Corfo. Other exit cases are Efizity and the last partial exit, edtech’s startup Uplanner.
Even though the current model has been successful for ChileGlobal Ventures’ accelerator portfolio startups, the institution has a vision for the future where more actors will be integrated in order to strengthen the venture capital industry. “It has come to our attention that more and more corporations want to have ties with dynamic companies, which is an opportunity both for large companies to incorporate innovations in their business models, as well as for startups to work and validate their solutions with a consolidated player in the market,” explains Jamie Riggs.
The presentation of Corfo’s report during November, emphasized that the success and sustainability of international accelerators comes from the backup provided by an investment fund. “In addition to adding large corporations by providing Corporate Venture Capital services, our future planning is rooted in the creation of new investment funds with corporates or family offices, as we have done with our CLIN fund, generating more investment opportunities and links between all the actors in the ecosystem. We believe that the key to our business model and the value proposition of our accelerator has to be associated with giving opportunities to our startups as they grow and achieve both sales benchmarks and raising capital. And that is achieved by being able to have a role in every stage of startup’ growth: an accelerator, support from angel investors (through the ChileGlobal Angels network), and investment funds, such as the current CLIN Fund and the impact fund we are about to launch: CLIN II”, concludes Riggs.
