Tag: chile startup valuations

Startup Valuations Created By Government Investments Aren’t Real and Can Hurt Startups

A version of this post appeared in the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio on August 18th with the headline Inversión sin riesgo no es inversión.

The Chilean government, via CORFO, has tried to seed the Chilean startup ecosystem to get it to grow more quickly. There’s always room for improvement, but overall, they’ve done good work and the ecosystem has grown. The three main programs CORFO has to support startups are:

  • Startup Chile – $20m ($40-25k depending on exchange rates) equity free grants
  • SCALE – $60m (89k-120k) equity free follow on grants
  • SSAF – $20m, then $40m (89k-120 total) follow on either direct or via incubators for 7% option for up to three years

CORFO awards many SSAFs each year, most via incubators that use CORFO’s money to “invest” in startups. These startups pass a selection process, then get $10-20m upfront, and then if they make it through each incubator’s unique process, they can get the $40m follow on. The incubators put the startups through an acceleration process, which can either be helpful, neutral, or in some cases harmful to the startup, depending on the incubator’s skillset. (more…)

US Startup Valuations and Their Effect on Latin American Startups

A version of this article originally appeared in El Mercurio, one of Chile’s largest newspapers with the title Valorizaciones de startups en EE.UU. y su efecto en Chile. I write a monthly columns with the goal of helping Chileans understand what’s going on in the US startup market.

Many people have been talking about the “third tech bubble” in the US, including many investors like Mark Suster, Bill Gurley and Fred Wilson. At least up until now, the bubble’s been deflating, and hasn’t crashed. “Unicorns” have been the most strongly affected, but all startups are are affected when the most successful VC backed and public companies lose value.

VCs make the vast majority of their money by investing so that they can either sell their shares in the company in an acquisition, or currently less commonly, when the company goes public. If valuations for the “best” startups go down, the upper limit for startups that haven’t gotten to “the pay window” yet go down, at least in the short term. These startups then have to adjust their valuations lower at each step down the chain, as VCs are not as likely to pay high valuations of their ultimate upside looks to be lower, at least in the short to medium term.

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