The business incubator of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV), Chrysalis, was founded at the end of 2009 in the city of Valparaíso, Chile. Ever since, it has stood out as one of the most active organizations in the area of financing and support of dynamic high-impact ventures in the early stages.

Chrysalis stands out for the operation of the SSAF Seed Capital Fund of Corfo, its main partner, where it has assigned close to US$ 2.3MM to the date, counting for the coming years more than US$ 4MM destined to the co-financing of enterprises with high growth potential.

Currently the incubator has provided financing for 38 startups, sustaining a constant growth for more than four years, both in the number of enterprises served, personalized services, and in experience and value proposition, which allowed it to be recognized as one of the 25 best incubators in the world associated with universities, and 3rd in Latin America according to the UBI Index 2014 ranking.

Chrysalis has expanded the scope of its work in 2015 by opening an office to support entrepreneurship in the capital of the Atacama region, Copiapó. The arrival of the incubator in this northern area raises the decentralization of innovation and entrepreneurship, proposing a support model where local entrepreneurs are the protagonists and can become agents of change and innovation in one of the most strategic regions of the country.

Mission

Create, promote and grow innovative technological businesses with a high productive impact, through the delivery of an integral incubation service recognized for its customer orientation and operational excellence, consistent with the PUCV's entrepreneurship policies.

Vision

To become the university technological business incubator, national and international reference for the success of its startups, the excellence in its methods and the operational excellence of its management team.

Chrysalis has developed the incubation process after a finished instance of analysis within the organization, in order to deliver a service as comfortable and viable in its operation, both for the entrepreneur and for the incubator. The result is a clear and professional process with the constant support and advice of managers, mentors and the Chrysalis management team.

The process that a startup goes through from entering Chrysalis until its exit, is divided into five major stages that are detailed below.

Selection

It is the first stage of the incubation process, where all the startups enter through the mass call. In this, the applicants present all relevant background information to be considered, such as a business model, a minimum viable product, a work team, sales, customers, among other determining factors. Once the different selection filters have been approved, startups are accepted to move to the acceleration program.

The startups selected by Chrysalis are all dynamic, high impact and with growth potential in early stages.

Acceleration

Once the startups have been selected, they enter the Acceleration program, which aims to stimulate and speed up the process of validation of the incubates, admitted to the program after exceeding the respective call. In a period of two to three weeks, the chosen ones are trained in the Running Lean methodology for the validation of startups where they are given key knowledge about entrepreneurship and innovation

Each week modules are developed to include theoretical and practical lessons, personalized mentoring and presentations of the weekly progress, where startups are trained in topics such as Design of Experiments, Definition of Clients, Project Management or the Elevator Pitch. On the other hand, startups receive mentoring from the staff of the incubator and mentors. They further develop the search and validation stage of their business model. The validation of the most risky hypotheses of the business model is sought in this stage, an implementation plan for the first months and the consolidation of a solid entrepreneurial team.

The Acceleration stage ends with the presentation of the startups to the Corfo Business Directory, where the startups that will be incubated in Chrysalis are selected.

Search and Validation

Once the startups have entered the Chrysalis incubation portfolio, the Search and Validation stage begins with the objective of finding the best business model that allows scalable business in the medium term. It is expected that the startup can validate its most risky hypotheses of its business model and reduce the uncertainty associated with it in the following dimensions:

a) Technician: that is able to build a product that delivers value.

b) Commercial: that there are customers willing to pay for the value received.

c) Market: that the business is viable.

d) Team: that there is a team with the capacities to carry out the venture.

The Search and Validation stage delivers up to US$ 20000 to the selected enterprises and ends with a new presentation before the Chrysalis Business Directory.

Scaling

After strengthening in the previous stage, the startups continue their development in the Scaling stage, where what is sought is the development of the business based on the validations made in the previous phase.

At this stage, the building of a new version of the value proposition is essential, as well as the realization of sales that allow the business to be self-sustaining in the short term, develop the marketing channels of the value proposal, and expand the business to new markets.

This stage is fundamental for the development, scaling and sustainability of incubated startups. During this period, startups receive up to US$ 80400, which is delivered in 3 sub-stages based on the state of progress of the milestones of the venture.

Exit

Finally, the venture terminates its incubation in Chrysalis, and the startup passes the Exit stage of the incubation process and thus forms the student network of the business incubator.

It is expected that during this stage the startups will dedicate themselves to perfecting and expanding their businesses to new markets and, as far as possible, to internationalize their offer if they have not yet started it.

Once graduates, Chrysalis continues supporting the ventures with its co-incubation network.

The business incubator Chrysalis seeks to encourage the creation of innovative companies with high potential. For that, it delivers, in addition to the Incubation Process itself, an integral support to the entrepreneurial teams that seek to convert their businesses into scalable startups.

The offer of the professional support includes following services:

• funding
• training courses
• personalized advice
• accounting
• marketing and communication
• production space / co-working
• advice on intellectual property
• legal advice

An important part of startup support is networking. The incubator provides contact to networks of mentors, investors, business partners and other incubated enterprises.

http://www.chrysalis.cl