Chile has been making headlines recently with Start Up Chile, a government backed initiative to attract foreign startups and investors. . Recently Arnon Kohavi of Yarden VC spent 6 months in Chile in an attempt to build out a $40M fund.
As always, I see a lot of parallels between this sort of thing and our humble efforts at bootstrapping the Central Oregon startup scene. Which is why I find Mr. Kohavi’s interview with The Next Web interesting. He talks about what he learned and why he eventually decided to pull out.
Some quotes that resonatedwith me and why …
I took off because it will take longer for Chile to reach the tipping point. Good will from the government and a few people isn’t enough to re-create what places like Silicon Valley, Israel and Finland have
I love what I see locally. We’re making progress year over year. But we’re clearly not at a grandiose tipping point yet. Will that come next year? the year after? ten years… or ever? ’Hard to say. For me, I prefer to focus on making incremental, sustainable improvements.
I also like the point about good will. There’s a lot of that, which shouldn’t be taken for granted. But we also need to better engage at all layers of our community, especially among the emerging generation of entrepreneurs. (read, “high school, college, and entry-level”)
I’m convinced we’ll see more Chilean entrepreneurs move elsewhere in the future. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, and my own country, Israel, also went through this phase.
It’s tempting to look at the departure of a company or a particularly talented individual from our local scene as a loss. And in some ways it is, but this will always happen; there’s nothing to be done about it. We should take comfort in knowing we’ve got great ambassadors going to other communities, helping to recruit for us. And, more importantly, we should strive to have people leaving for the right reasons. It’s one thing for a business or person to be lured away by investors or opportunities in Silicon Valley – that to my mind is an unequivocal success for us – but if they’re leaving because there’s simply no other choice, because there are no opportunities for local work, or salaries simply aren’t what they need to be… well, then that’s a failing we need to address.
what is called VC in Chile is actually private equity – bankers in suits with a finance background and very limited knowledge of entrepreneurship
‘Just another reminder that startups have to be particular about the quality of money they receive, and we need to be realistic about how local venture measure up. Fortunately I think we do pretty well; many of our local investors have both experience and connections in the Bay Area.
You need to live in a place to understand it
Clearly Central Oregon and Chile differ in many important ways when it comes to our strengths and weaknesses as a tech community. But I wonder if we’re asking the right question when we introspect. Instead of asking, “Why would a business move here from the Bay Area,” perhaps we should be asking, “Why would they move here instead of someplace like Lake Tahoe?” Tahoe is the Bay Area’s outdoor playground and it has one foot in Nevada where there’s no income tax, after all … :-/
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