Accepted into Startup Chile grant program, need advice

Our startup has recently been accepted into StartupChile (SUP).

If you don't know, they offer a 40K grant to launch over 6 months in Chile without claiming any equity in your project. Our team will likely accept, but I am concerned about the fine print, specifically spending caps and reimbursements.

Does anyone have any experience with SUP they could share?

First of all, congratulations on being accepted! Maybe we'll see each other in a couple months, we've been considering applying in a future round. :)

I've talked with several people there about this and other topics. From what I hear, you should be taking around ~5K per person to support the first two months, while things get set up for the reimbursements. After that, it's just a matter of keeping receipts of everything and they'll reimburse in about 15 days time.

Important things:

• when renting a place, you need to pay in advance so that's a huge bill right at the start which takes a while to be reimbursed
• plane tickets receipts should be in the name of the person traveling, NOT the company. They reimburse you personally.
• I think the topic above applies to all expenses. I'm not absolutely sure, so check the T&C and talk to the staff.

As for accepting, I think you definitely should. Every company I've seen going to Startup Chile has grown tremendously and really made a profit (both money & value) from going. Don't throw away the opportunity.

Hope that helps!

Tomé Duarte

Congratulations Laramie. I'd advise looking through SUP's directory of accepted startups, and contacting some of the founders directly: http://www.startupchile.org/theshow/projects/ These are the people who will best be able to answer your questions.