The most successful ventures are founded by entrepreneurial teams rather than individual entrepreneurs, but a bigger founding team comes with its own challenges to master. In the special case of establishing a university spin-off, the number of founders is likely to be higher, the team members fulfil various roles and have a different level of commitment to the day-to-day running of the company.

As a provider of resources and permissions, you can expect the university to become a significant shareholder as well. Splitting the equity equally among university and/or founder researchers might be detrimental to the spin-out in the long run. So how to make sure everyone gets his/her fair share of equity?

This workshop will answer questions such as:

• 🍰 Should the person who delivers results get more equity?
• 💡 Should the one who came up with the idea have more equity?
• 💥 What happens if a co-founder decides to quit?
• 📝 What are the dos and don’ts and possible consequences when splitting the founders’ equity?
• 👀 How to tackle founders who don’t commit 100% or want to continue their academic path?
• 🔨 What are some tools to ease the process of splitting the founder’s pie?

At the end of the workshop you will:

• understand why to use different types of shares for different stakeholders
• know what to consider when splitting the founder’s pie
• have a good overview of what obstacles to avoid when founding a university spin-off
• know what to expect when negotiating with your university
• have gained some insights on how to structure your next steps

About the speaker

As a managing director, Lukas Rippitsch aims to help his team constantly outperform stakeholder expectation with a clear focus on making processes more efficient and to guarantee client satisfaction. Having started his career in the investment banking sector, Lukas discovered his passion for combining big chunks of data, econometrics and his social skills to solve complex solutions. A set of forensic skills, translation skills (software engineering team vs. normal people) and a good sense of diplomacy are the pillars of this professional career.

Check Lukas Rippitsch on LinkedIn!

About the Entrepreneurship for Scientists Series

The Entrepreneurship for Scientists Series organized by the TU Wien Innovation Incubation Center (i²c) is targeting scientists who would like to enrich or develop a personal entrepreneurial skillset & business competencies, know more about opportunities how to navigate innovations from „the lab“ to society or who would simply like to engage in entrepreneurial thinking. These workshops are free of charge to scientists from all faculties and institutes of TU Wien. Registration required.

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