While the majority is busy calling itself “entrepreneur”, “ceo”, “founder” and “chairman”, a few work towards building valuable companies.

First day at a driving class today. Hope to learn soon, looking forward to
being able to drive my new car.

Booked a Hyundai i20. Would be getting the car tomorrow, yay!

The problem with articles like “how we got our first 10,000 users” or “How we made our first $10,000” is that they only work for the ones who wrote the article. You are different and you would need to do something different to achieve that. Read such articles to understand the process, but do not copy it. Build your own “How we got…”

I’m part of the first batch of Start-Up Chile 2011. We are working on Buffr.com now working fulltime on JustUnfollow . The process to obtain a visa to Chile involves a few documents that you need to obtain in India and I thought it would be best to provide some info here.

If you’ve been selected into the Start-Up Chile program then the next step is to reach Chile. If you are in India these are the set of documents that you need before you get your visa to Chile.

• Medical Certificate

This can be obtained from any general physician. All you need is a letter from the physician saying you are in good health.

• HIV (AIDS) Test

Get your HIV (AIDS) test done at the local pathology lab, you should get the report within 2 days.

• Police Certificate

This is where most of the confusion arises. You can obtain the Police Certificate (I think it’s called PCC, not sure) from either the local police station or from the regional passport office. If you go to the police station it usually would take around 2 weeks. At the regional passport office they give it within a week and if you request a little they might even give it within a couple of days. So your best bet is to first go to the regional passport office and apply for the Police Certificate there. You would need to carry proof of residence.

If there are any more documents required please obtain the same, these are the important ones that I can remember and the Police Certificate is the one that is a pain in the ass. The rest of the documents are easy to obtain.

Start-Up Chile folks would send you a code that helps you schedule an interview with the Chilean embassy in New Delhi. We got our visa within a couple of days but I would suggest you keep a weeks time in your head after you have obtained all the documents. 

Once you have obtained your visa, it would be time to book your tickets. There are no direct flights to Chile from India hence you would be going with stop overs (there will be a minimum of 2 stop overs in any route). 

Please remember, you need to check if any of the countries that you would be stopping over at require a Transit Visa. If they do, the best thing to do is choose a different route, one that does not require a Transit Visa.

We initially booked

• Mumbai -> London -> Sao Paulo -> Santiago(Chile)

But later realized that London requires Indians to obtain a Transit Visa. Obtaining a Transit visa is almost the same as obtaining a tourist visa and if you do not have enough time on your hands it’s best not to go through such routes.

We finally booked

• Mumbai -> Qatar -> Sao Paulo -> Santiago

None of these require a transit visa. There are a couple of other routes that do not require a transite visa for indians : 

1. India -> Netherlands -> Lima -> Santiago
2. India -> Turkey -> Sao Paulo -> Santiago

I think there’s another route through Johannesburg that does not require a transit visa but I’m not too sure about it.

While booking the tickets, you have 2 options, either a one way ticket or a return. I did a mistake and booked one way since I wasn’t sure when I would want to return from Chile. But that was a mistake. Not because I do not like it here, it’s a beautiful country with wonderful people. But the tickets back home now cost me several times more! To give you context, I was getting return tickets for around US$2000 But I booked one way for around $1600. And the tickets from Santiago to India costs around $2200. Which means had I booked return tickets it would have cost me $2k but because of one way I’ve ended up paying $3.8k

This seems like a long post! If you have any questions please let me know, I’ll be glad to help.

Update: You can check if a transit visa is required on this site.

It’s always good to have a screencast displaying the most important features of your website. I looked around to find websites or people who would make a screencast but nothing seemed to suit my budget. I realized getting a screencast can be expensive. Whenever I realize that, I do one of the two things. I either forget about the idea or I try to do it on my own. Since this was important for us I chose the latter.

This is how I went about creating a screencast of Buffr : 

• I used Jing (Pro) to capture a video of buffr displaying what I thought were important features that users would like
• I then downloaded Camtasia and edited the video. Editing involved chopping off a few sections which I thought were not needed. I also zoomed in on features so that users did not need to go full screen to see the screencast
• I needed music that was legal and royalty free so I bought one from PremiumBeat

It took me around half a day to get it right. This was my first attempt and I’m a little more confident that the next screencast that I try would be better than this. It’s a start.

This is the screencast.

Update: My second attempt after we revamped the Buffr UI

There’s an Indian fine dining restaurant near our place. We finally visited it today. I like the name - “Salaam Bombay”. It’s run by a guy from Madras and he said they serve only North Indian food. 

So, in Chile we had North Indian food in a restaurant named Salaam Bombay being served by a South Indian! 

The next time I go there I’m gonna take some pics and put them here! The food was expensive (there are very few Indian restaurants here in Chile and they are expensive, they ought to be because the ingredients needed are rare and expensive as well).

I loved “rogan josh”(mutton) and the “jeera rice” here.

Damage (in chilean peso) - 22000 + 2000(tip) divide by 3 people = 8000 peso each.

I was invited for a chilean lunch at a friend’s place. Chilean cuisine is usually bland (at least by Indian standards) but she was sweet enough to make some spicy salad for us. I’m not really a salad person but I just loved this one!

For the first time in my life, I actually ate an oyster, raw!!! All you do is squeeze lemon on top of it and eat it. I felt exactly the same as the author of this post did! 

It’s been almost 2 months since I landed here in Chile. When I was leaving India, I thought I would blog everyday but I haven’t been able to, I failed in doing that.

It’s been a good 2 months here. The people here are extremely friendly. No one knows english hence it can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning. But over time you get adjusted to the new language and though you wouldn’t learn Spanish overnight, you gain enough confidence to get around the city.

I like the metro here as well as the cabs though the cabs are a bit too expensive but they are convenient if you are a group of 3 or 4. I’ve made some new friends here but haven’t had the time to interact much with them since buffr.com has been keeping me busy.

I hope to blog more about Chile, about the program Start-Up Chile and about everything else I experience while I am here working, enjoying, meeting new people and trying to build an easy way to manage social media accounts.