Startup Chile: misleading claims & bureaucratic rejection

Anastasiia and I are software developers building a chat application that captures fresh reactions to the messages you send. We’ve stumbled upon a Startup Chile’s pre-acceleration programme The S Factory and decided to give it a go. TSF is meant for projects with female co-founders and the website greets you with the following eligibility criteria:

The application process is fairly simple, you need to record a video and fill in quite standard application form. There are separate pages for the project leader and optional co-founders, however the fields are mostly similar except for the leader’s ones asking for additional info on person’s experience and fit to lead the project.

We had our doubts as to who should be the leader. At first we’ve filled in Anastasiia’s data thinking this might be the right thing to do since the project is aimed at female founders. However closer to the application send date we’ve decided to switch places since I’ve got managerial education as well as more extensive working experience and would do better fit in the early stages as a team leader.

With this change we’ve submitted the application and were excited to get the decision by the 20th of July. However we’ve gotten the news much earlier, with a pre-screening rejection saying the following:

Dear Alexander Telegin

We are very sorry to inform you that your team was screened out of our Round 8 of TSF selection process, because of the following reason (s) and according to our Terms and Conditions:

The lear leader is not a female founder

This means that the application will not continue for evaluation.

Here you may find a copy of the information from our Terms and Conditions (English)(Español)

We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Kind regards,

Start-Up Chile Team

We were quite surprised, since the rules on the website clearly state that the project must have a female co-founder, not female leader. Surprised by the rejection, we started our communications with the admissions team explaining the situation, highlighting the fact that all widely communicated rules don’t require the leader to be female and saying we don’t mind Anastasiia being the leader of the team, we even set her details in the first draft of the “leader form” on the application.

Despite our efforts to highlight the discrepancy in the programme ads and the rejection reason, even with the our expressed agreement on changing the team leader (basically, changing the tick from one team member to another), the admissions team shows no mercy:

Hi Anastasiia and Alexander,

Thank you for your emails and for applying to Start-Up Chile.

We are very sorry this was not clear to you in the terms and conditions.

Unfortunately, we cannot consider your application now with the changes you are mentioning, we’re very sorry!!

We do however want to encourage you to apply for our next Generation of TSF 2019 — it would be great to see your project in the next evaluation process!

The very best,

Admission’s Team

What is more disturbing — the extended rules stated as the reason for rejection do not explicitly mention the “leader rule”:

In our terms and conditions:

“ 4.1 Beneficiary (only one)

A natural person with a female gender identity duly specified during the application process, who must act in name and representation of herself and of the executors, as the person responsible before Corfo. The person designated as the beneficiary must participate in the program in Chile, during the entire period of project execution, and be exclusively dedicated to the development of this project; likewise, the beneficiary will be the active and passive subject of all rights and obligations established in the grant agreement, including detailed reports on expenses and activities materialized by the beneficiary or third parties”

In the application Form:

“3. Gender

The S Factory is a pre-accelerator that seeks to support early stage start-ups that have at least one female founder. Our goal is that a female founder is the one participating in the program on behalf of your team”.

So it seems to us that this, as it turns out — quite essential rule, has to be somehow inferred from the extended rules. Quite frankly, we can’t grasp the fact that the organisation aimed at helping startups can be so inflexible and bureaucratic. At least they realise this:

We are very sorry we cannot make exceptions — we are a Governmental entity and have to abide by the law in every way and ensure transparency in all our procedures.