Q Founder Seminar: “Slicing the Pie” – Navigating Cap Tables and Dilution
This will be an in-person seminar at the Querrey InQbation Lab. Lunch will be provided.
As startups grow and raise capital, founders face decisions that can significantly reshape their ownership and influence the company’s future. Understanding how and why dilution occurs, and the tradeoffs that come with different equity and financing decisions, is critical to navigating that growth strategically.
In this seminar, Dr. Deitcher will explore the strategic considerations behind startup ownership and dilution, including how founder equity, employee incentives, outside investment, and future financing needs can affect the distribution of ownership over time. Using practical examples, he will illustrate how decisions made at different stages of a company’s development can have long-term implications for founders, employees, and investors.
Participants will leave with a stronger understanding of how to think strategically about ownership and dilution, evaluate the tradeoffs associated with equity and financing decisions, and ask the right questions as their companies grow.
This is a closed in-person event, open to the Northwestern community (students, staff, faculty, and affiliated startups).
Please register using your university or startup email address.
About the Speaker:
Steven R. Deitcher, M.D., FSM ’86, FSM ’88 is the Founder, CEO, and Chairman of Bespoke Biotherapeutics, a Bay Area company developing genome-engineered B-cell therapeutics for hemophilia A and HER2+ breast cancer, and co-founder of a stealth clinical-stage cell therapy company focused on brain regeneration. He previously held executive roles at Radimmune Therapeutics, Medeor Therapeutics, and Talon Therapeutics, where he led Marqibo® from IND to FDA accelerated approval and eventual acquisition by Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, as well as at Nuvelo. Earlier in his career, he was Chief of Hematology and Coagulation Medicine as well as Director of Thrombosis and Vascular Medicine Research at the Cleveland Clinic, with prior academic posts at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A graduate of Northwestern’s Honors Program in Medical Education (B.S., M.D.), he trained in internal medicine at Barnes Hospital/Washington University and completed hematology/oncology fellowships and post-doctoral protein chemistry work at Tufts University School of Medicine.