Nathan Lustig

Startup Chile Application Help Round Six

Category : Startup Chile
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It’s that time again. Startup Chile is opening their sixth round of applications on monday September 24th.  This application period will be open until October 8th and the winners will be announced November 29th.  In the last application process 1509 startups from more than 60 countries around the world applied for a spot in this coveted program. 100 were selected and they’ll start to arrive in the next few months.  It has become more competitive as the number of applications has grown and this round could easily have over 2000 applications for 100 spots.

Startup Chile is a great program, especially for entrepreneurs who are in the bootstrapping phase or already have developed a product but need more time to figure out the correct business model to apply. My company, Entrustet, was part of the pilot phase of Start-Up Chile and arrived in Chile in November 2010.  I blogged extensively about my experiences in the program and in Chile, along with advice on how to get selected for Start-Up Chile. I tracked down the stats from the pilot round companies a year later, which was published on The Next Web. I also wrote an ebook, Startup Chile 101, with everything you need to know about living and doing business in Chile.

Since the third round, I’ve helped startups review their applications and prepare them to get accepted into Startup Chile. Overall I’ve now reviewed,  18 applications for prospective Startup Chile teams and 12 have been accepted.

  • Rounds 2/3 – 6/9 accepted 66%
  • Round 4 – 3/4 accepted 75%
  • Round 5 – 3/6 accepted 50%
  • Overall: 12/18 accepted 66%

In round 5, 6.6% of applicants were accepted into the program and 3/6 (50%) of the applications I reviewed made it. One company had applied two times previously and were accepted after we worked together.  Another team needed to completely redo their video and we worked together to make it happen. I thought 2 more of the teams that I worked with completely deserved to make it in, including one that I would have invested in myself.

I can help you craft an application that emphasizes the criteria that the judges are looking for, correct your grammar into perfect English and give you the tips you need to have the best chance at getting selected.

If you need help with your application, please contact me.  Editing, writing, review, advice.  I charge a small flat fee to review and edit your application, plus a success fee if you are selected for the program after I’ve helped you.

Want help? Got questions?  Want a quote?  Email me: nate at nathanlustig dot com or fill out my contact form.

Note: I WILL NOT write paid letters of recommendation.  I reserve these only for people I have known for a long time and know their project.

startup chile 101

Fixing My Relationship with Facebook

Category : Personal Thoughts
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I’ve always had a rocky relationship with social networks. I joined Facebook in Fall 2008, pulled in by the girl I liked who kept pushing me to join. It was awesome in college.  A great way to meet new people. A great way to stay in touch with my high school friends at other universities.

But as Facebook grew, I started to get uncomfortable. People started to behave differently.  They spent more time online and had less actual human contact. They used Facebook as a platform to show off their “cool” lives, political comments and inane thoughts of the day. I found myself doing it too.

I’d accumulated hundreds of “friends,” the vast majority people who I rarely talked to in real life. I started spending more time on Facebook, looking at other people’s lives who I didn’t really know! I became uncomfortable with oversharing and wasting my time.  Something had to change.

Deleting 600 Friends Didn’t Work

So in 2009, I went through my friend list of nearly 1000 and looked at each person.  I said to myself, “if I saw this person on the other side of the street, would I stop, cross over and say hi?”  If the answer was no, they got deleted. I got down to about 300, but I also hurt some feelings. I felt bad about it, but my relationship with Facebook got better. I spent less time look at other people’s curated lives, while wasting my own.

It worked for a time, but last year, I found my behavior starting to change again. I was spending more time on Facebook, doing nothing, wasting time. I found myself posting status updates and pictures only to show off, checking Facebook on my iPhone whenever I had downtime instead of actually living life. I felt a little disappointed when people didn’t retweet or like a photo or comment I uploaded. I was becoming the social media user I abhorred.

Social Networks Make Us Unhappy

On a trip to LA I realized that I was unhappy because even though I’d seen killer whales that only come to California once a year, I hadn’t gotten a good picture to show off to my friends. Something was wrong.  I deleted nearly 100 more friends and took Facebook and Twitter off of my iPhone. I later added Twitter back, but not Facebook.

I’ve gotten more disillusioned with social networks in general over the past six months. Social networks make people unhappy. If you’re like the vast majority of social network users, you post your best photos, your best updates, your funniest jokes, best articles you’ve read, vacation pictures, celebs you’ve met and show off what you’re up to.  You show a skewed portrayal of yourself. Facebook brings people down because we’re only seeing the best part of other people’s lives. And we think “if they’re living that well, why aren’t I?” And its addictive. It’s always there.

I also don’t like Facebook’s social pressure. “Like my status. Why don’t you ever post on my wall, he does, you don’t! Did you see her photo on Facebook?”  I hate Facebook messages. I get tons of them, but there’s no good way to organize them and I lose messages in the shuffle. I’ve missed meetings and cool opportunities because people contact me on Facebook when they could have written me an email or sent me a tweet. I hate getting sucked into Facebook.

Deleting Facebook?

About two months ago, I decided to completely delete Facebook. But I couldn’t do it. I administer 7 Facebook fan pages for brands. I get about 30% of my traffic to by blog from Facebook. I make money from consulting and blog referrals via Facebook. I get invited to parties and events. And it truly does help you stay in contact with people who you meet in your travels.

Next, I decided to defriend all by my 20 closest friends and use Facebook more like Twitter, but I realized that that would only help me with part of my problem. After thinking about it some more, I came up with a new solution, which I’m implementing now.

A Compromise Plan

1. Unsubscribe from all friend updates

My newsfeed is 100% blank.  I won’t waste time each day on random stuff. I’ll have less of a reason to check Facebook when I’m bored. I know I’ll miss out on the newest memes, a few interesting articles, but overall I think it’s a win. If I want to see what someone’s up to, I can still check out their profile.

2. Use Facebook more like twitter

I’m going to publish all of my posts to Facebook as public. I’ll continue to post my blog posts, interesting articles I see and anything else I’d normally tweet out.  This way, I’ll still get the traffic Facebook gives me now.

3. Use Facebook more liked Linkedin

I’ll accept nearly all Facebook friend requests and view it more as my network, rather than friends. This way, I’ll stay in better contact with more people who might be interesting to interact with in real life in the future.

4. Put most of my photos to private

I’m going to put all of my photos to private, except a few of the most interesting ones.

We’ll see how it ends up. Have any of you changed the way you interact with Facebook? What do you do?

Startup Chile Pilot Round Companies: Statistics After One Year

Category : Startup Chile
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Starting in late 2010, the Chilean government spent $880,000 ($40k/company) to initiate Startup Chile’s pilot round, bringing 22 startups comprised of 33 entrepreneurs to Santiago.  It’s been just over a year since the last company from the pilot round ended their time with the program.  Since then, 400 more startups have arrived over four more Startup Chile rounds.

So what happened to the pilot round companies? Did they leave Chile? Did they all fail? Did they create any jobs? And did they have any impact on the Chilean entrepreneurial ecosystem?  I got in contact my friends from the pilot round and asked them about their businesses today.  Here’s what I found:

The Data

  • 6 companies (27%) have at least cofounder living full time in Chile.
  • 10 companies (45%) have significant businesses still running in Chile.
  • 7 startups (32%) have raised a total of US$4,020,000 from VCs and angels
  • 16 startups (73%) are still bootstrapping full time, of which 5 (23%) are profitable.
  • Taken together 12 startups (55%) are either profitable or have raised significant money.
  • 2 startups (9%) are being run part time
  • 3 startups (14%) failed
  • 1 startup (5%) was acquired
  • Founders from 14 companies (64%) have returned to chile at least once or continue to live here
  • 19  companies (86%) still have business relationships in Chile
  • At least 16 jobs were created in Chile

Here’s a few company updates:

Aeternasol: George Cadena’s original solar energy company made significant progress, but could not find success in Chile. George decided to start another business and partnered with Juan Pablo Salas, a Chilean.  They now employ 5 Chileans and has built Studiosnaps, South America’s first open air photobooth company. They’ve gotten investment in Chile and intend to expand to other countries.

Cruisewise: The first company to arrive in Chile, they built a prototype and then raised money from both Bay Area and Chilean investors. They are in San Francisco, growing and generating revenue.

Piccsy: Piccsy aims to dethrone google as the king of image aggregation.  With over ~4 million visitors, 30 million pageviews per month and growing steadily, Piccsy is quickly gaining traction. They made big news for their innovative pitchdeck.

Entrustet (my company): The first Startup Chile company to be acquired. I returned to Chile to work as head off marketing at Welcu, a 500 startups company. Jesse is in NYC working at Appinions.

Jumpseller: Formerlly Vendder, Jumpseller makes it easy for small business to sell online. Based in Chile, they continue to grow all over South America and employee Chileans.

Popup Chinese: A profitable, quickly growing, online language learning platform based in Beijing.

Piehole: The founders have stayed in Chile and continue to work on Piehole, a profitbale voice over platform. They’ve also founded mineralrightsforsale.com.

Stagedom: Formerly Death Star Labs, Shahar’s company took alot of flack in the press while he was here. He ignored it all, built his product, raised money and launched Stagedom, a beautiful iphone app to discover music.

H2020: The founders returned to the US and are now providing support for organizations (mostly sustainability related) who want to use their technology for mobile surveying/crowdsourcing.  In April, H2020 received the NetExplo prize, which included going to Paris to speak about the project at UNESCO and have significant interest from UNESCO to continue working together.

Other pilot round startups to watch: Rocketrelief, Moviemouth, Exim Force, Assert ID, Knowledgestream.

Conclusions

You can draw your own conclusions from the data, but I think it’s clear that Chile’s initial investment of $880,000 has paid off.  The vast majority of startups are still in business and are having some amount of success. Companies have raised money and nearly all of the startups continue to have business relationships in Chile.  If you take this data and add in the fact that Startup Chile was the best public relations campaign possible for Chile, the program has been a win.  Although there hasn’t been a huge Facebook style success, these stats begin to confirm that Chile is getting its money’s worth.

Spanish report: Radiografía a la generación piloto de Start-Up Chile

How to Ask Me For Help

Category : Entrepreneurship
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I get a few emails each week from people asking for help. Whether its about startups or anything else, I enjoy trying to help out.

I get emails from people I know, others are via introductions. Some are completely cold. I try to answer every email I get quickly and thoughtfully. But I give better responses to some emails, while leaving others to languish in my gmail inbox, starred for when I have some extra free time. How you ask me for help generally determines the quality of my response and more importantly, how quickly I get back to you. So what’s the best way to ask me for help?

  1. Email me. Don’t Facebook.
  2. Tell me how we know each other or how we came into contact. If we’re friends, skip this step.
  3. Keep it short. Don’t write a bunch of BS filler.
  4. Be direct. Tell me specifically how I can help, not open ended statements
  5. Ask without shame. Don’t flatter me. Don’t disparage your idea.
  6. Tell the truth

Here’s an email I got from a friend a few weeks ago. It’s perfect. Direct, to the point, a specific ask and doesn’t apologize for asking. I responded quickly because he made it easy for me.

Hey Nate,

I have a question about setting up a partnership that I thought you might have a good perspective on.

I have been working on building an app that’s the next evolution of that [removed] site I built, but I’ve also found a designer and an engineer who already have a few apps built that we could re-purpose to build the app I was originally designing. These guys were looking to expand into new verticals, so it works out perfectly as a way to get to market quickly with a quality product.

However, how do you split something like this up? They have a good chunk of the code already written, but the app would need to be re-designed with some additional dev work. They would work on the code and the design, and I would bring the end user knowledge to build and market the product. They have no knowledge of the space. Do you think it’s fair to ask for a 33% split or am I over stepping my boundaries? I know it’s a tough question to answer with the limited context, but I thought you might have seen something like this in the past. Any comments or thoughts would be much appreciated.

After I respond to your email, write back to me. I want to know you got my email. And if I helped or not. A thank you isn’t necessary, although it’s always appreciated! You’d be surprised how many people never respond again. That’s the surest way to make sure I won’t respond again. His response was:

Thanks Nate. I think you hit it right on the head. I appreciate your input.

If you follow these rules, you’re likely to get a quick, thoughtful email response! What do you think? Am I missing any important pieces of information that you like to see when people ask you for help?