All the comments here could apply to the situation in Colombia, and probably other countries in the region (and maybe Spain, for what I hear from devs from there).

A lot of the money committed to help startups is lost in the incubators. I "win" a competition where the 90% of the money was labeled as "consulting & support" and the cash left was to buy things they say I could buy.

I participate in others programs, where I move to the very last stages and drop because the situation is not that better. In this point, I consider a waste of time trying for any incubator here (for example: You need to sign a contract that say you MUST give 50% of all your time doing "incubator activities" as helpful as hear somebody explaining about internet marketing. Even for the king of support that could be nice, reduce the startup capacity to work by half is not great. And for 6 months or more?).

I try several routes, programs and contest. A lot of "yeah your idea is amazing! (not that much, but..)" but honestly look like without having US 100.000/Sales at the start none of the terms are a advantage for a starting startup.

Here are the challenges, similar to the ones other say in this thread and other:

- Not great tech education. However, good talent here but:
- The talent available is spread in shitty jobs or is almost invisible. Like I say in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7875627 some people are paid very badly, even for companies that could do better, and some people are insulated from the tech scene
- The community was huge around MS, when it was strong here. Now, is very disjoint, or that is my impression
- Not enough money liquity to hang around 3-8 months hacking. For example, I have my own apps but I need to stop working on them, do jobs for pay rent, and resume when I can. Because I'm independent at least I could try. People in full time jobs are out of luck if wanna build side projects

This is far harder that people in USA and other countries have, not impossible but this lead to:

- Get a cofounder is damm hard. I have a friend that I wish to have at my side, but he never get the nerve to drop from job (not that bad of a job). Others can't survive for more than 3 months. I have be independent this years mainly because my close family and myself is very relaxed & patient about money, and could live with less with not problem. But not everyone have the circumstances.

Probably some will say: Why not setup a nice side-project with monthly payments?

I have for more than 2 years looking how solve the problem of get money. Fastspring.com is the only that barely work for me, and Apple. In colombia, we are hit hard for all the drug traffic stuff (and some early crash about a pyramid scheme), so anything that could fly in seconds in USA is a wall here. For example, doing bitcoin here is like trying to buy radioactivity material. Is like banks hate anything that could help a startup..

Not even paypal work! You can't get money to the bank, you don't have stripe-like processors, the ones here are bizantine (and don't answer your mails or don't care for you). So the option is create a company in USA. And this is just one of several problems to overcome.

About investors:

Anyone that give you money, small or big, is your Boss. For live.

About get a loan:

We have https://www.datacredito.com.co, the "you have not pay bills, wall of shame". Who are there? Almost everyone!. For how long? How cares! So if a person is wealthy probably is ok, but the rest of us are toxic for get a loan (and must consider carefully wich one to get, so for example, with the intention of get a house is not good idea to default because your are dreaming of build a game!).

However at the bright side, I think the momentum is building. The situation is screaming of somebody smart enough to take advantage of the hunger of people in latin-america for build great things. I hope not miss this!