Some procedures look small until you try to complete them. Starting a company is one of them. In many countries in the region, it still means gathering papers, paying advisers, going to a notary, waiting for stamps, registering bylaws and losing weeks before being able to operate formally. For someone with an idea, that time is not an administrative detail. It is money that does not come in, customers that cool off, partners who hesitate and energy spent surviving paperwork before selling the first product.

Chile decided to cut that friction at the root. In 2025, the Business and Companies Registry (RES), known as Your Company in a Day, made it possible to incorporate 221,262 companies and societies, the highest figure since the system began operating in 2013. The process can be completed online, for free, with a Chilean tax ID and digital identity, in under 24 hours. While incorporating a company in Brazil can take between 60 and 90 days, and in Argentina the process can exceed nine weeks in practice, Chile turned the entrance to entrepreneurship into something that fits into an afternoon.

That is not a minor detail. Starting a company quickly does not guarantee that the business will work, but it does remove a barrier that used to separate many people from formality. The difference between waiting three months and starting tomorrow can decide whether an idea is born or stays in conversation. That is the achievement: Chile did not make entrepreneurship easy, because entrepreneurship is never easy. It made starting legally stop being a race against bureaucracy.

The Notary Chile Took Out Of The Way

To understand what Chile built, it helps to look around. In Brazil, forming a Sociedade Limitada can require steps before the Junta Comercial, Receita Federal, Social Security, the municipal authority and, depending on the sector, additional agencies. Each stage brings forms, deadlines and validations. In Argentina, the path can include notarized bylaws, registration in public registries, publication in official bulletins and tax identification. Colombia and Mexico have advanced, but still maintain costs, chamber visits or notaries for certain company types.

The comparison is not about mocking anyone. It helps explain how unusual Chile is when it works. Law N° 20,659, enacted in 2013, created an electronic regime parallel to the traditional system. That means anyone who wants to can still use a public deed and notary, but anyone who needs speed can create a company through digital forms, electronic signature and free registration. The State does not ask the entrepreneur to walk through offices to prove they deserve to exist. It gives them a platform and lets them start.

When an entrepreneur in Recife can wait up to 90 days and one in Chile does it in under 24 hours, the difference is not convenience. It is opportunity.

The name Your Company in a Day works because it promises something anyone can understand. But behind the name there is a deeper decision: treating formalization as public infrastructure. Just as a road shortens physical distances, a good digital system shortens administrative distances. It lets a person move from idea to legal entity without asking permission from a chain of intermediaries. It does not solve financing, sales, talent or competition. But it clears the first door.

Twelve Years To Make It Normal

The interesting part is that the system was not born as a habit. In May 2013, during its first month of operation, the RES represented only 22.9% of company incorporations in Chile. Most still used the traditional path: public deed, Official Gazette extract, registry inscription. Trust in a public platform does not appear by decree. It is earned when the tool works, when it does not collapse, when people recommend it and when the promised procedure actually happens.

The migration was gradual, but sustained. By the fifth week of operation, 505 companies per week were already being incorporated through the system. Then came years of growing use, adjustments, integration with digital identity and mass adoption. By December 2025, the picture had flipped: 90.1% of all incorporations in the country were completed digitally. What began as an alternative became the norm.

That transition says something important about the Chilean State when it builds a tool well. The RES survived governments of different political orientations because it was not tied to one administration's campaign. It was not a logo for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. It was a platform that solved a real problem, and that is why it stayed alive. Continuity matters as much as technology. Many countries launch portals. The hard part is maintaining them, improving them and getting citizens to trust them for more than a decade.

The 2025 record also shows that digitalization did not remain trapped in Santiago. The Metropolitan Region concentrated 89,715 incorporations, 44.3% of the total, but the strongest relative growth appeared in regions: Atacama rose 31.5% compared to 2024, Los Ríos 28.8%, Arica and Parinacota 28%, Ñuble 27.8%. That is key. A well-designed digital procedure does not only accelerate. It also levels the territorial field. A person in Coihaique, Illapel, Los Ángeles or Alto Hospicio enters the same system, pays the same, waits the same and does not need to travel to the center to begin.

Formalizing Is Also Democratizing

There is a simple idea behind this achievement: the harder it is to formalize, the more people are left outside. If creating a company costs time, money and contacts, the system favors those who already have backing. If creating one is free, remote and fast, the door opens wider. That does not turn everyone into a successful entrepreneur, romanticize precariousness or replace financing and training policies. But it lowers the initial barrier. And in entrepreneurship, lowering the first barrier can change a lot.

The preference for Sociedades por Acciones (SpA) also tells a story. In December 2025, they represented 77.45% of incorporations through the RES. The SpA is flexible: it allows someone to start alone, bring in partners, organize ownership and scale without rewriting everything from zero. Its dominance shows that the system is not only useful for formalizing small activities, but also for projects that are born thinking about growth, capital or collaborators.

Formalization opens other doors. It allows a business to issue tax documents, sign contracts, sell to larger companies, apply for public instruments, separate personal assets from the business and build a track record. For someone selling from home, providing professional services or starting a small store, that difference can be enormous. The State is not handing them success. It is removing an obstacle that used to consume time and money before the business could even be tested.

Since July 2025, the Ministry of Economy also added CoopDigital, a platform that brings this logic to the cooperative world. That matters because not every venture is organized as a traditional company. Communities, producers, workers and associative groups need different structures. Extending digitalization to cooperatives shows that the original idea can grow: if the State learned to simplify one door, it can simplify others.

That is the kind of modernization people can feel in daily life. It does not need to promise that Chile will become Silicon Valley or that every venture will become a unicorn. It is enough for someone to do in one afternoon what used to require contacts, an office, travel and patience. When bureaucracy stops being a wall, creativity gets a fairer chance to prove itself.

That is why this article is not only about companies. It is about a concrete way in which Chile works. A country that spent years hearing that Latin American bureaucracy was inevitable built a practical exception: incorporating a company for free, online, in under 24 hours, and doing it so often that in 2025, 221,262 companies were born through that path. Twelve years, more than 1.48 million companies incorporated, 90.1% digital adoption and one less barrier for anyone who wants to begin. Not bad for a country that decided to do it right. We are bacán.