David Fernandez

David Fernandez is the Chief Growth Officer at Start-Up Chile, one of the best business accelerator programs in Latin America.

He is leading the strategy to create and secure growth opportunities for the Start-Up Chile Portfolio (more than 1000 active startups) and other Chilean scaleups. David supports startups and scaleups by providing: talent management opportunities, match with big corporations, access to private funding, and access to global markets.

He studied business at the Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico) and an Innovation Master's degree at the Pontificia Universidad Católica (Chile).

David's speech in Startup Contest Quarterfinals:

Start-Up Chile: The entrepreneurial mindset
Today, Start-Up Chile is the main Accelerator Program in LATAM and one of the main ones in the world. It is globally recognized as a bold experiment from the public sector and after Start-Up Chile was created, more than 50 countries created a similar program. 
In 2010, Start-Up Chile was created by the Chilean Government (Ministry of Economy & CORFO) with two main intentions: to change the nation’s culture towards entrepreneurship and to position Chile as the hub of innovation for Latin America. In 2015 these goals were reached and new goals were set. Since 2016, Start-Up Chile’s new goals are to ensure that Chile remains a world hub for technological innovation and to be known as drivers of technological enterprises that impact the domestic economy positively.
Start-Up Chile was the first program of its nature in the world. Since its inception, it has spurred replica models, grown its networks, and has been the focus of academic research all over the world.  In the past 10 years, Start-Up Chile has received more than 2000 startups across its programs, each application process we assess applicants from new areas of the world.