Start-up wins place on Chile programme

As part of Start-Up Chile, which aims to attract early stage entrepreneurs to the country, the government provides participating companies with $40,000 of equity-free seed funding and access to a network of mentors and start-up veterans.

In return, companies are asked to give something back to the local community and they must stay in Chile for at least six months. Leonard Austin, Ben Waine and Joe Mewis are behind Leeds-born Recensus, an add-on for e-commerce websites that pulls “a network of independent, impartial reviews” on to their sites. The firm later secured a place on Start-Up Chile.

“It’s an incredible opportunity,” said chief executive Mr Austin. “This allows us to not only focus on the next stage of development for Recensus, but also puts us in a unique environment where were can work alongside dozens of other start-ups and feed off this entrepreneurial energy.”

Mr Mewis said that the aim was initially to go after businesses in the UK and US, but he said: “Since arriving in Chile, we’ve seen that the economy and ecosystem out here is a lot more developed than we imagined, so we have sped up our plans for multi-language support and are looking to use the contacts we have built here and support network to target Chilean businesses too.”

He said that the firm is running workshops on marketing and other skills while in Chile and it has plans to hold a two-day ‘hackathon’ whereby they will help students, developers and entrepreneurs develop an idea they have into a product over a weekend.

Mr Austin said that Recensus wants to “revolutionise” reviews on the internet.