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The 2020 Know Hub Ignition Entrepreneurship Training program, delivered in partnership between Know Hub Chile and UC Riverside's Office of Technology Partnerships, launches this week. 2020 is the second year of the government-funded Chilean program which aims to strengthen and promote technology-based entrepreneurship in the country.  This year’s program received 66 applications for 16 openings, 20% more than last year and 42% of the project applications were female led which met an important inclusivity goal of the 2020 version of Know Hub Ignition. Human health, animal health and environment are the main industries of the selected 16 projects. 
 
Know Hub Chile and UC Riverside have a long-term and multifaceted partnership including the Know Hub Ignition program which was launched successfully in 2019 and it is now being regarded by other stakeholders in the country as a potential benchmark and pre-requisite for other entrepreneurship programs.   
 
This year’s 16 participants will start with a 5-week introduction to foundational concepts on the topics of IP, company formation, and technology valuation among others. An intensive 10-week entrepreneurship training program delivered by UC Riverside follows, with a focus on market validation of the technology supported by a team of UCR expert mentors. The methodology of this portion of the program gets participants “out of the lab” and talking to customers to understand customer’s needs and pains to determine if there is commercial potential for their technology. At the end of the 10-weeks three winners will be selected to come to Riverside and spend a week immersed in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the region as they conduct additional customer and potential strategic partner interviews and present their technologies to a panel of investors. 
 
In 2019, the inaugural year of Know Hub Ignition, the program’s finalist teams ranged from a drug delivery platform, soon to be incubated in Riverside to obtain access to the US market and advance its technology, to a natural disinfectant, now being produced and marketed in Chile.  Click here to learn more about Know Hub Ignition and the winning teams from the 2019 cohort.  

Chile 2020 Cohort 1
Chile 2020 Cohort 2