Santiago Demo Event: An Overview

September 15th, 2018, Santiago, Chile. The Santiago Demo Event came to a close on August 17th. Participating startups from Palestine traveled to Santiago, Chile, to connect with high profile business leaders, serial investors and venture capitalists of the Palestinian diaspora. The event took place over a span of five days and featured a series of workshops, meet-ups and pitch events. Organized events were designed to elevate participating startups business models to best appeal to potential impact investors and open new opportunities for international based business collaborations.

The event brought Palestinians from around the world together to transform the local Palestinian startup scene. Over 40 impact investors of the Palestinian diaspora in Chile took part in organized event activities and provided invaluable mentorship, consultations and investment opportunities to enhance the viability and visibility of participating startups. The highlights of the event included one on one coaching sessions to help startups develop their ideas, as well as to establish long-lasting networks and business collaborations between the diaspora and local startups.

The Santiago Demo event was organized to enhance the economic outlook and viability of the Palestinian startup scene. Selected startups presented with the opportunity to meet with high-profile business leaders, consultants and impact investors of the Palestinian diaspora in Chile to scale their startups and integrate into global markets.

The goal of the event was to overcome boundaries and bring key stakeholders together especially those of the Palestinian diaspora to encourage entrepreneurial pursuits and usher in a new era of globally competitive and innovative Palestinian startups.

Marketing manager at Mashvisor, Sylvia Shalhoub had this to say about her participation in Santiago Demo event, “This was an important experience, learning how people do business outside of Palestine and to be able to take all this knowledge back with us to Palestine and continue the connections we’ve made during this week.” She continues, “I think it’s all very valuable to how we will be doing business in the future and I’m happy to have had this great experience.”

Chilean based Marcelo Diaz Bowen, Serial Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist and Angel Investor expressed his enthusiasm for the outcome event, “The interest was amazing, not only the Palestinian diaspora but from good friends to Palestine, all of them came to me and said that this was an amazing event!” He adds, “Everyone was very impressed with the quality of the startups and we all look forward to working with them in the future.”