So Steve's statement about the culture not accepting failure was a red flag. His statement that the government was the prime investor was another red flag. (Governments are notorious for not admitting failure. To do so would challenge the their authority and ability) And once he said that bankruptcy laws there were draconian? The red alert started going off. It's simply non-doable.
It's a shame. I love the scenery, and the people are terrific. But a million small failures make a great success, and if you can't fail easily, quickly, and learn from it? You're never going to develop much of anything.
The rest of us belong to the middle class and are being kept on our toes, lest we suddenly join the poor. Any bill that gets passed usually favors either the poor or the rich. If you default on your debt or anything like that, your name and info will end up in Dicom (the local Equifax), which is often enough to bury your prospects of employment indefinitely, even after you've paid off your debt and normalized your situation.
So you see, that's where the fear of failure comes from: if you have a stable, well-paid job, there's not much incentive to risk it for a startup.
Like rejection therapy, the 'umbrella' employees could be encouraged to fail often : Not enough failure implies not enough risk-taking / innovation.
Given the interesting things going on in the engineering labs I visited and the startups I met, one would have thought the place would have been crawling with VC’s fighting over deals. Instead it felt like the government – through CORFO - was doing most of the risk capital investing.
Not ideal, but better than nothing. Capitalism can get the most solid footing as a sustainable economic system when there is minimal government involvement. Need wealth to create and fuel more wealth.
Govts like to pick winners. So do companies, but with companies, only one has to hit for society to win.
Create a newer, better ecosystem for entrepreneurs. You're pretty much destined to fail if you try to replicate SV. Move the goal posts to something else.
Honestly, I think the most challenging thing will be to change Chile's cultural fear of failure. That is probably the single best asset that Israeli culture has in spurring innovation. It is just considered the norm.
It seems that one good way to inject innovation is to introduce companies that can employ young, entrepreneurial Chileans and set examples they can follow in future ventures.
