Michele Bachelet, Chile’s President, announced the Chilean Tech Visa today which allows founders and tech workers an express lane to a visa in 15 days.
While countries like the US are making it harder for the best foreign entrepreneurs and tech workers to start their businesses or work for top companies, Chile has blazed a radically different path, making it easier and more attractive for foreigners to start a business or work for a high tech company in Chile.
Starting with Start-Up Chile in 2010 , Chile has incentivized foreign entrepreneurs to open operations in Chile. More than 1700 startups have received a $40k equity free grant, one year work visas, a bank account and office space to move to Chile to get started.
Successful companies, they can apply for programs like Scale, which give the best Start-Up Chile companies another $100k of equity free money. Since 2010, Chile has become the world leader in the race to attract the world’s best tech talent and their program has been copied by dozens of countries around the world looking for an edge in the new, digital economy.
The new Chilean Tech Visa puts founders and tech workers into the “express lane” to acquire their visa within 15 days of application. It’s for people who want to either start a business in Chile or work for a high tech startup.
This new visa will be a game changer for Magma portfolio companies, as it will make it much easier to continue attracting top engineering, sales and operations talent from around the world to continue to power world class businesses like PropertySimple, GroupRaise, Jooycar and more. These companies compete globally and have offices in the US, but also have tech and sales offices in Chile that are able to attract top global talent. Younger workers love the flexibility to work from the US office and the Chilean office as needed and it’s been a recruiting advantage to attract top global talent.
It will also continue the pipeline of top US and European startups that are moving to Chile or opening offices to build international teams to compete globally.
From La Tercera, one of Chile’s largest daily’s (originally in Spanish):
The visa is meant for founders, owners or investors in high tech businesses located in Chile; for professionals and technologists in science and high tech who want to come to chile to work for high tech businesses and startups; and for entrepreneurs who are selected for one of Start-Up Chile’s three lines of financing and acceleration for high tech businesses.
“We want to keep moving forward so that more businesses continue thinking of Chile as the best place to start a tech company in the region, creating a virtuous cycle where everyone wins,” said President Bachelet.
If you’re interested in learning more about Chile’s tech visa, either to open an office or to come work for a tech company, please reach out. We have job openings in top companies for engineers, sales, biz dev, design and more.
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