Start-Up Chile is an accelerator program that is financed by the Chilean government and meant to jumpstart the tech community in the South American country. Today, the program is holding its first demo day in San Francisco. What’s especially interesting about Start-Up Chile is that the program, which started in 2010 and has already graduated four classes, isn’t just trying to attract Chilean entrepreneurs. Instead, the Chilean government is making a concerted effort to attract companies from around the world. Many of the 19 startups that are presenting in San Francisco today (and many of which also attended TechCrunch Disrupt this week) hail from Singapore, New Zealand, India, and Canada.
As Start-Up Chile’s executive director Horacio Melo told me earlier this week, the program has become so popular that it has now moved from just trying hard to attract people to getting more than 1,000 applications for every one of its 100-company classes. These companies get $40,000 to move to Chile for at least six months. Our own Alex Williams wrote a good summary of how the program works.
Here then, are the 25 companies that came to San Francisco this week to pitch their startups to Silicon Valley investors:
- Comenta.TV: Comenta.TV is an early stage company that identifies, measures, and analyzes in real time the resonance of live TV shows in social networks.
The Social Radio: The Social Radio lets you listen to Twitter mixed with your favorite music, so you don’t have to read them while driving, running, or working.- Jogabo: Jogabo is a community platform for soccer players to organize, share, and discover unique games in their cities online or from a smartphone.
- EscapesWithYou: EscapesWithYou.com is a social e-commerce platform that features happy lifetime experiences at incredible destinations around the world.
- Bractlet: Bractlet reduces energy consumption in hotels through a hardware-software integrated solution that allows guests to earn rewards by using less energy than others and allows managers to see a real-time breakdown of energy use, create customizable alerts, and reduce energy misuse.
- BiometryCloud: BiometryCloud is the most simple, fast, and robust identity platform on the market. We provide a cloud-based facial recognition engine that can identify users, stop fraud, and make personal interactions easier with just a picture from their mobile devices.
Chef Surfing: A new home for chefs on the web. To Chefs: Create your professional profile and find new opportunities. To Guests: Hire a chef the easy way. Get custom proposals from chefs in your city.- Chu Shu: Chu Shu makes Silver Linings, shoe liners that extend the life of shoes and keep feet odor-free. We see our business as an opportunity to make a positive change on the environment.
- ContentDJ: ContentDJ is the HootSuite for content curators. It fights information overload and lets you curate and publish awesome content on social media sites.
Flipter: Flipter lets you create, share, and organize opinion polls about the things you find interesting on the web and in real life, including images, videos, and links. Best of all, you can browse Flipter and discover the demographic profile of those voting with powerful charts and reports.- Kedzoh: Kedzoh gives you back the time to manage and to learn, time that’s been lost to today’s complex tools and systems. Kedzoh is an enterprise tool that makes it easy and fun for managers and employees to create and take short, three-to-five-minute, lessons on their smartphones or tablets.
Kwelia: Kwelia is a data analytics platform for real estate. Positioned at the nexus between big data, quantitative analysis, and real estate, we deliver intelligence like dynamic pricing and automated lease term generation to property owners.- LocalGuiding: LocalGuiding is a peer-to-peer marketplace for unique travel tours offered by local guides. On our website travelers can easily find and instantly book personal tours organized by locals.
- MiBuzz.tv: MiBuzz.tv is a social tool for video people where you can find, collect, and share videos + work + ideas.
- Motion Displays: Motion Displays develops the next generation of self-service and guided selling software solutions for the retail industry.
Street Investor: StreetInvestor is the Latin-American version of Bússola do Investidor, a Brazilian online platform to help individual investors to invest. We offer our users investing tools and information to help them make the best investment decisions.- Wallwisher: Wallwisher is a family of applications and services that simplify publishing content on the web. People can use it to create, communicate, and collaborate more easily, effectively, and imaginatively.
Yupi: Yupi Studios develops apps, games and innovative solutions for Smartphones, Tablets, Smart TVs and Social Networks. We’re partners of Tapjoy, who helps us marketing freemium games for iOS and Android.- WeHostels: First social booking site for hostels, beds, and couches. We take the beauty of the Social Web and bring it to the Travel Booking Market.
Babelverse: Babelverse is the first solution for universal speech translation, powered by a global community of human interpreters. Multilinguals and professional interpreters alike are able to earn money for their time, creating a new source of income for people all over the world. (The company was a finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012.)- GymPact: GymPact conquers workout excuses with money as a motivator. Commit to exercise, and earn cash for doing it – paid for by non-exercisers. Just check-in at the gym with our iPhone app, or track outdoor runs, walks, and bike rides with our partner RunKeeper.