Author's note (May 2026): I wrote this in July 2018, weeks after formalizing the company and receiving the first CORFO disbursement. I'm sharing it because many Latin American entrepreneurs ask me what the process looks like from the inside. Here it is, unfiltered.

The CORFO Process From the Inside: How We Won Seed Capital as Foreigners in Chile

What CORFO is and why it matters

The Corporación de Fomento de la Producción is Chile's state agency for innovation and entrepreneurship. Its Seed Capital program is the gold standard of the Latin American startup ecosystem, and for a concrete reason: it's not a loan. It's a non-repayable subsidy for early-stage startups. The Chilean state bets on your project. If it works, the country wins. If it doesn't, the money isn't returned.

For us, winning the Seed Capital of 33 million Chilean pesos (approximately USD 50,000 in 2018) was the birth certificate of VeanX SpA. We went from being two Venezuelan engineers with a dream to being a legal entity with a company tax ID, accountable to the Chilean state for the efficient use of public funds.

That changes how you look at yourself in the mirror.

The obstacle no one mentions: the guarantee

Official CORFO guides explain the forms, the deadlines and the evaluation criteria. What they don't explain is the practical problem that any immigrant faces when they want to apply.

CORFO disburses the money in installments, but before the first payment, you must back 100% of the amount with a bank guarantee certificate or a surety insurance policy. In plain terms: a bank or insurer is saying "I'll cover you if the project fails."

For someone with five years in Chile, local credit history and real estate, this is standard bureaucracy. For a Venezuelan immigrant with a work visa and no local banking history, it's an odyssey.

We had to use a mutual guarantee company (Sociedad de Garantía Recíproca) — firms that act as guarantors for SMEs and startups without sufficient credit history. The process was slow, required demonstrating real project traction, and involved paying a commission. But it was the path forward.

Lesson: Before applying to CORFO as a foreigner, research the SGRs (Sociedades de Garantía Recíproca) in your region. They are the bridge that solves the guarantee problem. Don't wait for approval to find them.

What CORFO evaluates: the three axes

After going through the process, I understood that CORFO evaluates three dimensions in every project:

1. Social and/or economic impact TALS addressed a real communication gap: the deaf community in Chile represents tens of thousands of people who face daily barriers in healthcare, education and employment. The problem was measurable, verifiable and socially urgent.

2. Viable technical solution Having a good idea isn't enough. CORFO funds companies, not concepts. They needed to see that the prototype worked, the technology was real and the technical team could execute. Here, our hackathon wins and Top 6 in the SAP Innomarathon nationally gave us objective credibility.

3. Scalability and business model This is where many social impact projects fail. CORFO doesn't fund NGOs; it funds sustainable companies. We demonstrated that if TALS worked in Chile, it could be scaled to any country with its own sign language — LSE in Spain, Libras in Brazil, ASL in the United States. The market wasn't Chile: it was the Spanish-speaking world and beyond.

The real stages of the process

The Seed Capital application process is not fast. It was a six-month marathon broken down as follows:

Stage 1: Online application

Extensive forms about the project, the team, the target market, the projected revenue model and the fund use plan. This stage feels bureaucratic but is strategic: the clarity of your proposal here determines whether you advance to the next round.

Stage 2: Relevance validation

An external evaluator analyzes whether the project makes sense in the Chilean market and meets the program's criteria. If it passes this stage, detailed technical questions arrive in writing.

Stage 3: Demo Day before the expert committee

This is where the process becomes human. You present live before a committee of three to five evaluators: academics, business people and sector representatives. You have five minutes for the pitch and five for questions.

This was the most important stage — and the most revealing.

Stage 4: Council approval and formalization

If the committee recommends the project, it goes to the council of the sponsoring entity (in our case, a regional development organization). Approval arrives by email. Formalization — company deed, account opening, agreement signing — can take additional weeks.

The presentation before the committee: what actually happened

We brought the TALS prototype working. It was risky — hardware always has its own opinion about when to cooperate — but we couldn't conceive of presenting a sign language translator without a live demonstration.

The pitch lasted exactly five minutes. We showed the problem (the communication gap), the solution (computer vision on low-cost hardware), the traction (hackathon wins, Top 6 nationally at SAP) and the market (Chile's deaf community as pilot, Latin America as horizon).

Then came the questions.

One judge asked what has stayed with me the most: "Why not just make a smartphone app?"

My answer was immediate and I'd stand by it today: "Because a deaf person needs their hands free to speak. They need a dedicated device that doesn't require holding or touching anything. The phone immobilizes them. The TALS system gives them back the freedom to communicate with their whole body."

The committee went quiet for a moment. Then it nodded.

That understanding of the user experience — which doesn't come from technology but from listening directly to the deaf community — was what differentiated us from other technically similar projects.

The day of the notification

We were in the coworking space in Iquique. It was a Tuesday afternoon. The email arrived without warning: "Project Approved."

Darwin and I looked at each other. There was a shout of joy. And then, immediately, a silence.

We had just taken on a responsibility of 33 million pesos toward the country that had taken us in. It wasn't just celebration — it was the concrete weight of having to deliver.

Where the money went: the real numbers

Seed Capital isn't free money. Every peso is justified, reported and audited. VeanX's breakdown was as follows:

Research and Development (R&D) We hired the first two developers to migrate the system from color pattern detection to real Machine Learning with TensorFlow. This was the most important technical leap: going from a fragile system (dependent on perfect lighting and background) to a robust one trained on real Chilean sign language data.

Hardware Purchase of high-resolution cameras and Raspberry Pi 3B+ boards for the first three functional prototypes, intended for real-user validation.

Intellectual Property Trademark registration and patent application at INAPI (Chile's National Industrial Property Institute). Protecting IP from day one is non-negotiable — we learned this before someone taught us the hard way.

Community validation We funded the travel and logistics to test the system with deaf associations in Santiago and Valparaíso. This was, without question, the most valuable investment of the entire Seed Capital. Without this direct contact, we would have built technology for a community we didn't know.

What formalizing VeanX SpA taught me

Being the CEO of a Chilean startup as a Venezuelan was my real business education. Nobody prepares you for this:

• Understanding VAT, withholdings and monthly SII declarations
• Managing social security contributions for the first employees
• Reporting to CORFO with verifiable receipts every quarter
• Managing a company account separate from personal funds

What I learned in those two years of formal management I apply today in Portugal. Chile is a very orderly country, and if you don't follow accounting and tax rules, the project dies before it starts. It's not optional.

The real breakdown of work in a Seed Capital-stage startup: 20% technology, 80% management, bureaucracy and relationships.

The most common mistake in projects that apply to CORFO

I saw it in multiple projects in the Iquique ecosystem: entrepreneurs focused on winning the "prize" rather than building the business.

CORFO doesn't fund charity projects. It funds sustainable companies that generate employment, innovation and market traction. Many projects with genuine social impact failed evaluation because they didn't have a clear revenue model. "We'll sell the hardware" is not a business model — it's a wish.

The project that wins CORFO is the one that can answer precisely: who pays?, how much?, why do they prefer it over the alternative?, and how does that grow over time?

Is it worth it for foreigners?

Yes. Absolutely.

Chile gave a team of Venezuelan engineers with no local network or credit history the tools our home country couldn't provide at that time. But it's important to be honest about the real cost:

• Time: The complete process takes 6+ months. It's not fast money.
• Bureaucracy: The bank guarantee for foreigners is the biggest obstacle. Resolve it before applying.
• Residency: You need a valid residency visa. A tourist visa isn't enough.
• Corporate language: Forms and presentations must be in formal Chilean Spanish. Regional colloquialisms generate unnecessary friction with evaluators.

What CORFO does guarantee: if you win, the credibility seal it gives you is exportable to any Latin American context. "CORFO Seed Capital winner" opens doors in Buenos Aires, Bogotá and Mexico City that no pitch deck alone can open.

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CORFO Seed Capital Process Timeline (reference)

Stage	Estimated duration
Application preparation	4–6 weeks
Admissibility review	2–3 weeks
Relevance evaluation	3–4 weeks
Demo Day before committee	1 day (plan travel if you're outside Santiago)
Council approval	2–4 weeks
Formalization (company + agreement)	3–6 weeks
Total estimated	4–6 months

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Six years after receiving that email on a Tuesday in Iquique, I still use what I learned in that process: how to communicate the value of a technical solution to someone who isn't technical, how to account for every peso with transparency, and why bureaucratic rigor — however exhausting — is the way a country decides who to trust.

Chile trusted us. That's not something you forget.