Month: March 2011

My Favorite Places in Santiago

I realized I’ve written travelogues about my trips all over the rest of the world, but not where I’ve been living for the last four months.  Here’s a list of some of my favorite places, including restaurants, bars and random places to hang out.

Restaurants

Santiago has some great restaurants, but you have to search to find them.  Google doesn’t help (all the sites are flash, so google doesn’t read the content) and there’s no Yelp here.  Here’s what I’ve uncovered in my time here:

Pad Thai – Manuel Montt.  Great Thai restaurant with a good selection of beer and authentic Thai dishes.  Their outdoor courtyard in the back is a great place for a meal.  They let you order the dishes from 1-5 on the spicy scale and I got a 3.  The waiter warned me that it was going to be super spicy and tried to get me to go down one level, but in the end I wished I had gotten a 4.  Great food.

Cuidad Vieja – Bellavista.  Amazing, interesting sandwiches and not too expensive.  Lots of beer on tap and in bottles.  Plus they have this smoked, spicy red sauce instead of ketchup made in Valdivia that in unreal.

Tiramisu – Las Condes/El Golf.  Great thin crust pizza.  A little on the expensive side, but a cool atmosphere and top notch food.  It’s always packed, no matter when you go.

Fajita Express – Providencia/Pedro de Valdivia.  For $5 I can get a big burrito and a coke.  My goto cheap restaurant.

Machu Pichu – Providencia/Manuel Montt.  Jesse and I were walking around near our hostel when we first came to Santiago and ate here our first night, as it was the first restaurant we walked by.  We’ve been back a bunch of times.  Every dish on the menu is good, but the ceviche mixto is amazing.  It comes with a candied sweet potato, which is great.

El Naturista – Centro.  Vegetarian restaurant with two locations close to my office.  I love their pebre, which goes really well with all of their dishes.  My favorite is huevos rancheros with tons of pebre.

La Piojera – Centro.  I hesitate to include La Piojera, since I’ve only gone once, but it’s a great time.  They have their famous terremotos, which are made of white wine, pineapple sorbet and some light liquor.  They are good, but I loved the meat and the hot sauce at La Piojera.  And it was cheap.

Barandiaran – Providencia/Manuel Montt.  A little more expensive than Machu Pichu, but really good.  They have a swimming pool and a beautiful terrace in their courtyard.  They do a little more upscale peruvian.

El Huerto – Providencia/Orrego Luco.  Vegetarian.  The best salads in Santiago, hands down.  Their homemade wholewheat bread and their very vegetabley pebre are great.

Domino – Everywhere.  My other goto fast food restaurant.  It’s how fast food should be.  Good ingredients, lots of choices, not expensive.  They have surprisingly good salads as well.  Underrated: get the vegetarian sandwich (avocado, tomato, cheese) with a “pila” of eggs.  It’s about $4 and really good.

Kintaro – Bellas Artes.  There are a ton of sushi restaurants in Santiago, but this one has the fewest amount of rolls with cream cheese.  If you go with a big group, they have a “sushi/sashimi boat” that comes with about 100 pieces for about $45.  It’s a good place to go before going out.  You can buy a bottle of pisco for $12, which is $2 more than in the liquor store.  Every Santiago sushi spot has rolls made of avocado, which are my new favorite.  I’m going to miss those back in the US.

Fuente Alemanda – Pedro de Valdivia and Plaza Italia. The best lomitos in Santiago.  They come with lettuce, tomato, sauerkraut, avocado, mayo and I always add tons of spicy mustard.  The bread makes the sandwich.  They are huge though and you can split them between 2 people.  Kind of touristy, but worth it.

The one in the background had less mayo…

El Chaguito – Providencia/Manuel Montt.  Ok, so not a restaurant, but Jesse and I go here 2-3x per week to buy all of our fruits and veggies.  It’s 50% off from the supermarket and waaay better quality.  We can get a huge amount of fresh produce for about $10.  They get their fresh deliveries on Mondays.

A $5 produce run. Liquor not included.

Bars

Orego Luco – Providencia.  This is a small street just of Av. Providencia near Pedro de Valdivia that has about 8 bars with outdoor tables.  It’s full every night, except Sundays.  Almost every bar has 2×1 drinks until 12am.

Any outdoor bar on Pio Nono – Bellavista.  This area is sort of like a seedy version of the terrace in Madison.  There are tons of bars with plastic red tables and chairs.  You can get a litre of beer for $2-3 and hang out with friends.  You’ll see all sorts of characters walking by, but be wary of anyone who starts randomly talking to you in English right away.  They are likely shady characters.

Most of the bars on Manuel Montt, just south of Av. Providencia.  There are tons of bars and restaurants on Manuel Montt that compete for your business.  The outdoor ones have the best settings, but the smaller ones have the best drink deals.

El Kika – Providencia/Pedro de Valdivia.  Ok, so this is less than a 2 minute walk from my apartment, but it’s got good beer, cheap food and lots of outdoor seating.  One of my friends asked me “how can you possibly live there, I’d be at elkika everyday!”

Parks

Cerro San Cristobal – Cerro San Cristobal dominates the northern skyline of the city.  It’s a really nice walk up the hill and once you get to the top you get a great view of the city and the Andes to the east.  There’s also an elevator type thing if you’re too lazy to walk.  Entrance is at the end of pio nono, but I like to walk down Pedro de Valdivia to the other entrance and walk up from there.

Cerro Santa Lucia – A large hill in the middle of Santiago with a cool old castle/look out point on the top.  Great views of the city and shorter walk up than Cerro San Cristobal.

Cerro Santa Lucia

Parque Metropolitano – Connected to Cerro San Cristobal, I love to walk up Pedro de Valdivia to the foot of Parque Metropolitano and sit in the shade.  It’s a great place to get away from the noise of the city and get some work done.  It’s also a great place for a bbq during the weekend.

Mercado Central – Very touristy, but if you avoid the guys trying to get you to eat at their restaurants, they have an amazing selection of fresh seafood for super cheap.

Seafood! Check out hose prices!

Parque Bustamante – This park runs for a few miles from the Salvador metro stop all the way down town, along the river.  I love walking though the park on my way to or from work.

Parque Bustamante, near Salvador metro

 

Plaza de Armas – The Santiago Cathedral looks like it was transplanted right out of Europe.  Really cool architecture.

Plaza de Armas. Notice the police/protesters for the Obama visit.

My rooftop – I love reading, working and hanging out on my rooftop and those of my friends.  What a great feature for an apartment complex!

I have a little more than a month left in Santiago, so if I’m missing one of your favorite places, tell me!  I’ll be sure to check it out before I go.

Looking for more high quality information about Chile? Check out my book Chile: The Expat’s Guide:

chile expat guide cover

SXSW 2011 Recap: Chile, Digital Death, Hashable and the NY Tech Scene

Last year was my first SXSW and I had a great time, but 2011 was even better.  Here’s a quick rundown on my SXSWi and some of the big themes I saw.

Chile is on the tech map

I was lucky enough to moderate the Chile Technology Summit with Juan Pablo Tapia, David Basulto, Paige Brown and Leonardo Maldonado.  We talked about the Chilean technology ecosystem, entrepreneurship, social media, Chilean startup success stories and some of the government programs that have really helped Chile’s tech community.  It was really fun to be able to tell people I met that I’d been living in Santiago, Chile for the past four months because just about everyone I met had heard of Startup Chile.  It was a great ice breaker and allowed me to talk about more cheery topics than digital death.

I can tell you 100% that Startup Chile should already be viewed as a success for the simple fact that almost every VC, angle, entrepreneur and social media person knew of Chile and the program.  Last year, I bet only 5% of SXSW attendees would have know anything about Chile.  Add that to the fact that of our $40,000, at least half will be going directly back into the Chilean economy and that between Jesse and me 8 friends/family will visit, Chile is making it’s money back.

Digital Death is Growing Quickly

We celebrated our 1 year anniversary of our launch on Monday.  Last year, Jesse gave a talk  about our industry to a crowd of 20.  This year, there were over 150 people in attendance, and Twitter was abuzz during our session.  We’ve been featured in over 100 top media outlets and have seen the number of companies who are doing something with data and death online grow from 5 to almost 50.  The Digital Beyond wrote a book.  1000Memories got $2.5 in funding from some of the top VCs in world and whenever I told people about Entrustet, people either had heard of us by name, or had heard a story about the industry.  I got to meet at least six of our users and randomly ran into people who had checked out it.  I expect the industry to keep growing quickly and can’t wait to see what happens at next year’s SXSW.

You're Dead, Your Data Isn't: What Happens Now?

Hashable was the big hit

I’d used Hashable in the past, but didn’t like it until this year’s SXSW.  The first night, I met Mike, the founder, who personally sold me on why I needed to download the app.  I ended up using it multiple times each day.  It was funny, whenever I met someone from NYC, they always wanted to do Hashable, but the adoption rate from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs was way less.  I don’t buy that the mainstream will use Hashable as a “checkin for people,” ie every time you meet someone, but I can see it catching on big time for exchanging e-business cards.   Hashable made my business cards obsolete for most people.  The only downside is that Hashable strips the personality of your business cards into about 100 characters available in a hashable tweet.  I get comments on our business cards all the time and I enjoy seeing the creativity in business cards each year at SXSW.

The NY Tech Mafia

Another big change from this year to last year was the emergence of the NY Tech scene.  There is so much energy coming out of NYC, not to mention startups, VC money and developer talent and it was interesting to see.  NYC based entrepreneurs were more likely to feel like they were a part of something bigger.  It seemed like they thought they were part of a movement, part of a nascent industry or an important moment in history.  They community seemed much closer than many of the San Fran entrepreneurs I met.  I think it’s great that technology startups are happening in other places than just the bay area.  I really enjoyed seeing the energy and genuine excitement from the NYC entrepreneurs.  It also seemed that many of the NYC entrepreneurs were more focused on using tech to something, compared to some of the San Fran startups who were more interested in the pure tech side.  Both are very valuable and I’m not picking sides.  It was fun to see as an outsider and a marked difference from last year.

There are so many group messaging companies

And I don’t see the use.  I first used a group messaging system two years ago for a friends bachelor party and it was great.  We had a group of 8 of us, all doing the same thing and on the same schedule.  It was great.  At SXSW, I was in multiple groups (or pods) and just got annoyed by all of the messages.  Most were not relevant to me.  The groups were too big, our schedules were different.  It just wasn’t helpful.  I can see group messaging being something you turn on for specific events, with specific groups, but I don’t see it for everyday use.  There is a ton of money in the space right now and it will be interesting to see if Facebook integrates group messaging into Facebook groups.

Bubble?

There were so many companies doing “social something” or “x for facebook” that by the end we were joking around that we were going to start the Kayak for canoes and rent boats in Lake Austin.  I think startups have become hot and that there are lots of people starting businesses now just for the money, which can be dangerous.  I think there are bubbles in certain types of Internet businesses, but don’t think its completely systemic, like the initial dot com bust.  It’ll be interesting to see what happens!

Cool Startups+Things I Saw at SXSW

SparkRelief – Crowd Sourced disaster relief.  They launched a site that allows anyone in Japan to offer housing to those displaced, for free.  Could be a cool model to empower citizens to take part in their own disaster relief.

Startup America – While I would prefer less rhetoric and government chest puffing, there are clearly very smart people working on this initiative and President Obama seems to be behind it.  I was left the panel optimistic about a part of government for the first time in a long time.  Please stop saying “winning the future” though.  If Bush would have said that, everyone would have (rightly) made fun of him.

Data – It’s amazing what people are doing with data.  I saw countless panels, companies and entrepreneurs doing cool stuff with data.  It’s going to be fun to see the next level of services created when data becomes ubiquitous.

Artsicle – Lets you rent art, sort of like netflix and connects artists with the people who are buying new art.  Cool idea.

#sxswla – Latin America was well represented.  But I’d like to see more panels next year featuring people from all over the world, not just in separate tracks.  Sort of like with the inclusion of a ton more women this year.

Flavors.me – Amazing design and simple personal pages.  Mom, when you read this, I bet you could set up a site if you wanted.  I’d know the Flavors guys from before, but it was great to meet in person.

Grubly – Cool startup that connects people who love to cook, with those who love to eat

South By Southwest Chile Technology Summit

I will be moderating a panel at South By Southwest called the Chile Technology Summit on March 16th at 1230 at the Austin Hilton, ballroom F.  Twitter hashtag #chiletech.

The World Technology Summit is a new addition for SXSWi and features panel discussions from emerging technology hubs around the world including Brazil, England, South Africa, Singapore, France, India, China and more.  The goal is to share what it’s like to do business, work and live in these countries.  We’ll answer questions like:

  • How has the technology scene changed in your country over the last five years?
  • What is hottest new media technology trend in your country?
  • How is social media developing / evolving in your country?
  • What is the atmosphere / environment like for new media entrepreneurs?
  • What kind of government support is there for the new media industry in your country?
  • What is the level of education in your country? Is there enough talent for high-tech work?
  • What are the best resources / blogs / websites for people to learn more about new media in your country?

The panelists joining me at the Chile Technology Summit are Juan Pablo Tapia, Leonardo Maldonado and David Basulto.  Each panelist is a leader in his field.

Juan Pablo Tapia

Juan Pablo is the cofounder of Bowl, one of Chile’s leading social media agencies with clients like Ford, LG and others.  He is an experienced entrepreneur and loves technology and social media and also lectures at the Universidad de Desarollo. Juan Pablo will share his perspective on Chile’s developing social media and technology business scene.

Leonardo Maldonado

Leonardo is a serial entrepreneur involved in numerous projects in Chile, including Gulliver, InsumoChina, Gestion y Liderazgo, and Blue Company, a platform for creating personal online communities.  Leonardo is also involved in creating technology entrepreneurship and business opportunities for Region Fertil, a state in Northern Chile that includes the city of Antofagasta.  He will share his insights about creating businesses in Chile and what he sees as some of the successes as well as challenges still facing Chile’s rise as a technology economy.

David Basulto

David is the cofounder of Plataforma Arquitectura and Archdaily, the world’s largest and most trafficked architecture website in the world.  David graduated from Universidad Catolica’s architecutre program and decided to start an architecture blog with one of his friends.  After a few years of hard work, David and team turned Archdaily into the world’s most important architecture website.  David will share his perspective on what it’s like to build a world class business in Chile, along with the changes he’s seen in the Chilean startup community since he started his business in 2005.

 

I’m extremely excited to have the opportunity to share my experience living and working in Chile, as well as help Juan Pablo, Leonardo and David share some of their stories from the front lines of entrepreneurship and high technology in Chile.  I’m also excited to showcase Chile as one of the best places in the world to start a high tech startup.  If you’re attending sxsw, stop on by our panel!

Got questions?  Want to know more about Chile?  Put questions or topics you’d like us to talk about in the comments and we’ll do our best to fit them in.

Disconnecting

We are all extremely plugged in people.  Pretty much all of us carry a cell phone and  many have smart phones, which means the internet is at our fingertips 24/7/365.  Many of us feel out our element without a computer, smartphone and tv.

Thinkers as far back as the Romans mused that humans need periods of solitude to recharge and get away from the distractions of society.  Romans were talking about the importance of disconnecting in a time when the biggest annoyance was someone coming over and knocking on your door.  People communicated via letters and the spoken word.

Our brains haven’t evolved fast enough to be connected as much as we are now.  It’s extremely important to take breaks from our fast paced, tech driven society when you are simply with your friends, alone, unreachable or with your own thoughts.  You may say you can’t take a break from your life for a variety of reasons, but in reality, all of your rationalizations are excuses.  If you want, you can take a few days off from our tech society to be alone with your thoughts.

I just got back from seven days in San Pedro de Atacama and the Bolivian altiplano.  For the first three days, I checked email twice per day and only responded to messages that absolutely had to be answered.  When I went to Bolivia, I didn’t bring anything except my cell phone, which I kept turned off the entire trip.  Jesse was also on vacation, so our business was pretty much unreachable for about three days.

When I got back, I had 691 unread emails, 291 of which Google thought were important.  In reality, only 2 were extremely important.  I missed an interview request from a big tech blog and one deal slowed down a little.  When I got back, I immediately called the reporter and got the interview taken care of and pushed through the deal that had slowed down.  In reality, nothing bad happened.

Now that I’m back, I’m fully recharged and ready to attack my work and my life at full speed.  I had time to reevaluate my life, my business and my space in the world.  It was great to not have to think about business, city life, politics, buses, metros, emails, phones or meetups.  My body feels better, my mind is clear and I’m recharged.

When’s the last time you disconnected?  If it was a long time ago, take the leap on your next vacation and leave your internet behind.  Disconnect and see how much better you feel.