Sebastian Vidal

Sebastian Vidal is a seasoned executive with over 12 years of experience leading multi-million dollar public-private initiatives aimed to foster small businesses across Latin America.

His career is distinguished by several significant roles, more recently as the Operations Lead at Raincoat, Sebastian made a pivotal move after a decade of supporting and investing in startups to join this climate technology startup. Raincoat's mission is to safeguard individuals and businesses against the economic impacts of natural disasters.

Previously, Sebastian served as the Chief Innovation Officer at the Puerto Rico Science Technology and Research Trust, where he led the development of special projects. He collaborated closely with the CEO to craft the organization's long-term strategic direction. In 2015, Sebastian took a transformative step by relocating to Puerto Rico to establish Parallel18, the island's first global startup accelerator. Under his guidance, the program invests $3 million annually in 60 worldwide companies, quickly demonstrating a five times return on the public investment and significantly influencing the emergence of a new generation of Puerto Rican startups with a global mindset.

Earlier in his career, Vidal directed Start-Up Chile, a government-funded initiative to draw globally-minded entrepreneurs to Chile, aiming to position the country as a hub of innovation. His leadership was instrumental in supporting over 1,000 startups across various stages and sectors, managing an annual budget of $10 million, and leading the program to be recognized as Latin America's most innovative company by FastCompany in 2015.

Beyond these roles, Sebastian has played a vital role in shaping technology ecosystem public policies in countries such as Peru, Brazil, Malaysia, and South Korea and has consulted for the World Bank on a technology ecosystem development project in Lebanon. His contributions extend to investing in startups and mentoring within numerous accelerators and entrepreneurship programs, including Techstars, Stanford Ignite, and the Founder Institute.