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Interview to Tim Delhaes President of First Tuesday Americas

Guest post by: Ivan Silva

Article Overview: Tim Delhaes is a serial entrepreneur and investor in Chile and Latin America. In this interview he conducted for the site emprevista he talks about his past, present and future. Tim is a great contributor to entrepreneurs of Chile and has been at the forefront of entrepreneurial events and seminars in Chile. He is now on a mission to spread this success to the rest of Latin America with his organization, First Tuesday.

Interview to Tim Delhaes President of First Tuesday Americas

Name: Tim Delhaes

Location: Santiago, Chile

Nationality: Alemán

Companies: First Tuesday, Santiago.cl, Tigabytes, The Pitch Method Sitio

Tim is an entrepreneurial icon in Chile having been at the forefront of many of the county's most prolific websites and digital entrepreneurial ventures. He now dedicates a great portion of his time sharing his knowledge with entrepreneurs mainly through First Tuesday and related ventures. Fortunatelly for those who have yet to know about him and his organisation, First Tuesday, in Latin and South America he is slowly implementing The First Tuesday model to a wide range of countries in the continent. As you will find out in this interview, Tim is eccentric, does not hold back on his convictions and opinions, being true to his risk taking entreprenerial characteristic as a person.

Emprevista: Tim ya es todo un icono en el fomento del emprendimiento en Chile y ha participado en importantes proyectos digitales y en el desarrollo

• Tim, tell us abit about yourself:

I am German and I have lived in Chile for 14 years. When I was 15 I went to Indonesia as an exchange student. When I returned to Germany, I found that it was very cold especially for surfing which is my favourite sport. I tried to find another exchange in a country where could surf for example New Zealand, South Africa and I was about to go to South Africa after receiving an offer when I received another offer from Chile. I took a look at the world map and the Lonely Planet book because in those days there wasn't much internet in Chile, there was only one internet website of the University of Chile, where I saw a picture of Pichilemu, there was not much information. I imagined South America and Latin America

and a mulata dancing under the palm trees and then I confirmed that wanted to come to Chile

and departed.

How is Chile technologically if you compare it to when you first arrived?

Chile has come a long way and has had good development. Interestingly, there have been many changes worldwide in the last 10 years, remember that 15 years ago the internet did not exist and since then we have had some very profound changes. As mentioned earlier, when I first came to Chile there was only one web page of the University of Chile and it's one of the first things that impressed me in Chile. I managed to connect to send email in the office of the husband of my ex- social service boss, Alberto Contreras who is a graphic designer and my partner in my first business. Back then, it was possible to register new domains locally for free (the. Cl), so I decided to register some domains. I Initially, I tried to register chile.cl, but it was taken, so then I tried Santiago.cl which was free, so I registered it and still remain our property. In the late 90's, santiago.cl was launched as a portal site that had aspects of social media was once one of the largest portal in Chile. Since those times, Chile has had very profound changes as it has an incredible platform of telecommunications technology where everyone walks around with next-generation phones. There is a deep digital penetration of technologies in the country today. I think many things are happening in the field of technology, but there could be more. Chile also has a characteristic of being able to develop technology in the geothermal field and also in solar technologies, which is starting to move things in a positive direction, but there is room for more improvement.

What opinion do you have of the entrepreneurs of Chile currently, the good, the bad and what needs improvement?

There is an important thing to mention to begin with. When I came back from Silicon Valley in late 2007, I arrived with a few key convictions. Obviously in San Francisco, Silicon Valley has a lot of projects and events every day, with many interesting people and ideas, as well as many activities. But, if there is one thing that caught my attention was that the ideas and the projects were not better and people were not smarter than the people in Chile, it was simply a matter of more people and more activity. For this reason I thought that because today we all have internet access and access to the same free tools, read the same blogs, can ask the same things from the same suppliers and sell to the same audience, that this should be a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs worldwide, so I came back to Chile with that mentality. Entrepreneurs and the ecosystem in Chile that produces mature and potentially successful entrepreneurs have a long way to go yet. In the whole year I see about 100 to 200 projects from entrepreneurs, for example now with the sub 35 (see page sub35.cl) we go to all regions of Chile to find the best 3 projects in a pre-selection of 10 to 50 in each region or city and if you were to ask me if I would invest in some of these projects today, I would say for sure No, but if you ask me if I would invest in one of the entrepreneurs I would surely tell you, Yes. What is important that the potential is there, what is missing is a little more density in the environment and eco system, connections, best practices and knowledge Overspill that is lacking so that the quality of the enterprises do a quantum leap.

How do you see entrepreneurial confidence in Chile at the moment, especially if we take into account the natural disaster that was the Earthquake at the start of the year and coming out a Financial Crisis?

My impression was that the financial crisis in Chile never really came, the prices of apartments never lowered. Consumers were not really affected. Some large firms used the crisis to fire people and renegotiate contracts but in fact, Chile handled itself very well in the crisis. Obviously, the earthquake was a very important issue. I believe that something very important came out of the earthquake which was the incredible manner the country handled the issue of the earthquake, which has created a lot of trust and closeness amongst the people, which in the end was a very good driver for entrepreneurship as well. I think it's important to look to examples of other countries such as taking the history of post World War II in Germany to see how such disasters or crisis encourage people to become entrepreneurial and rebuild. I think we are seeing an extremely positive phenomenon here in Chile, and I do not think the confidence of entrepreneurs has been affected.

What are some of the differences between entrepreneurs of different countries in Latin America?

In my experience, in countries that I have seen, Chile is the most advanced. Countries such as Argentina have a lot more critical mass, larger volume and larger market thus more potential. But, Argentina also has its problems of corruption and structure. Chile is actually a very good platform and is creating very good projects that will succeed. In other countries the state is very different from what I've seen in South and Central America, where the is a need for more angels and angel networks, insufficient maturation of projects, the typical things that happened in Chile a few years ago are behind what is happening today in Peru and Colombia for example. Now the most interesting thing, and it's something that greatly enriches me, is that no matter where you go, the last place in the world in the last city or village, there are always entrepreneurs coming out with the desire to conquer the world and those are the ones that need to be strengthened.

Can you tell us a little about your current activities with First Tuesday in Latin America?

First Tuesday started in Chile in 2008 with the support of Endeavour where we held 10 events that year and launched First Tuesday in Concepcion led by Max Morales and Pedro Silva of the University of Desarollo where there have been several community events every month . The following year, First Tuesday was born, which was very interesting, La Serena also had it's first event and so now it's creating its own dynamics along Chile where we will have by the end of next year ongoing activities in the 15 regional capitals . 1 year ago, Felipe Torres a Chilean who moved to El Salvador launched First Tuesday in El Salvador with great success and it had a series of repercussions later in Panama, Honduras and now Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica that will perform these activities or are making preparations. In South America, we are close to Peru, possibly Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador, which are all countries that somehow will be participating in the network. One of the major goals or objectives that must be solved next year will be how to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and best practices between different cities, as we rely on the management of events and we have access to people to allow the exchange and facilitate the flow of experiences and ideas. Also, we need to figure out how to connect with the entrepreneurs of different countries, such as connect to entrepreneurs in Chile with an entrepreneur from El Salvador or Silicon Valley or elsewhere as part of the First Tuesday network. Finally, a model of sustainability to help the cities as a central hub that is dedicated to supporting these different cities.

What's your opinion regarding innovation in Chile and Latin America?

On the subject innovation in Latin America, without comment..... I think they are words used by politicians and big business to describe a concept that they don't understand.

The 5 empreguntas:

1. What's your favorite band or musical group?

Dire Straits

2. Person that you most admire in Business?

No big business people, those that excite me are the guy who came out of nowhere in some country somewhere in the emerging world with the ambition to conquer the world without forgetting his roots.

3. What would you do with $1million dollares if you had 1 hr to spend it.

Very logical, donate it to First Tuesday.

4. If you could travel to any part of the world in this instance, where would it be?

Hong Kong, I would like to live there for some time.

5. How would you describe your country (Germany) in 4 words?

I hate living there, but I would say: "for me, the best place to go on a vacation.

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Article Tags: Chile, entreprenership, innovation, Latin America, south america



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