It still has some strange points: the $40k is a reimbursement -- not a grant or funding. They reimburse you up to 90% of your expenses and expect you to show up with over $5k in cash to support your group until you start getting reimbursed.
It sounds like a great program if you have $10k+ sitting idle and want to extend your runway as far as possible, but it may be a stretch for a zero-customers/zero-products web startup.
We came to Chile with around US$1500 each (we're a team of two). We could survive (pretty comfortably) till the first reimbursements came in (once you get a bank account which is within a week or two you have around $2000 more at your disposal thanks to the line of credit you get at the banks here).
Yeah, you get reimbursed for 90%. But I think it's fair. As founders we need to have put some money into our start-up and have something to lose when things don't work out for us.
Yes it is true, reimbursement fills up 90% of all expenses, but allowed salary compensates for the remaining 10% even if the team has only one member. But since the grant money is dispensed via reimbursement you will need ~5-7K of cash per team to start.
It sounds like a great program if you have $10k+ sitting idle and want to extend your runway as far as possible, but it may be a stretch for a zero-customers/zero-products web startup.