Start-Up Chile Entrepreneur Tear-Gassed as Students Riot (video)

With Chilean high school and university students planning to protest in central Santiago this evening despite government warnings not to, the Start-Up Chile office advised its startups and then closed the office at 4:30pm local time.

Start-Up Chile is a government program that gives foreign entrepreneurs $40K and a one-year visa and takes no equity in exchange for them bootstrapping their startup in the country.

American entrepreneur Marshall Haas, in Chile for the program since early June, was working from home today but tweeted frequently about the clash between riot police and students. He ventured too close to the action out of his own curiosity and got tear-gassed (see his video and photo above).

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Report: Second Life Making $100M a Year

Virtual 3-D world Second Life currently has revenues of $7M a month and is approaching $100M a year, a company insider has told LAUNCH.

Linden Lab, Second Life's parent company, would not confirm an exact amount but said that revenues exceeded $75M in each of the last three years (yes, that's a strange way to put it) and that the company is profitable. Q1 2011 was its best quarter to date.

Our source said 15% of revenues come from sex-related services. So how else is Second Life, around since 2003, making money?

Company spokesperson Peter Gray confirmed to LAUNCH that the "primary revenue source is actually virtual land."

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Live Blogging TechStars Boulder Demo Day

The LAUNCH Team followed every TechStars Boulder demo as it happened this morning, Aug. 4. Twelve companies -- starting with energy-savings-as-a-game SimpleEnergy and closing with contact-management-solution FullContact -- made their pitches to a packed room of investors. Note: all times are PDT.

All photos from @nicklongo.

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Better for the Planet than Farmville -- SimpleEnergy Makes Saving Energy a Game

WHAT: Reduce individuals' energy consumption with game mechanics. Customers see how their usage compares to those of their friends and share their achievements on Facebook. Rewards include prizes like iPads and even electric cars. SimpleEnergy gets context about customers (e.g., house size) from city records and factors in weather conditions when alerting people about their usage trends.

Available only to customers of utilities that work with SimpleEnergy and those who buy a third-party device that attaches to their meter (about $200).

LAUNCHERS: Yoav Lurie, CEO [ @yoavlurie, LinkedIn ]. Justin Segall, EVP [ @JustSegall, LinkedIn ]. Chris Ennis, VP [ @ChrisEnnis, LinkedIn  ].

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Everybody Loves Data, But Companies Can't Afford to Build Analytics for Their Customers -- Enter ReportGrid

WHAT: Tool for SaaS vendors and technology platforms to give their customers real-time analytics and visualizations. ReportGrid provides generalized analytics and is hosted in the cloud, so there's nothing to install or configure. Its API lets companies program analytics across multiple customer accounts with real-time reporting. 

LAUNCHERS: John A. De Goes, CTO [ @jdegoes ]. Matthew T. De Goes. Jason Spinelli, COO [ @jspin5 ]

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