"The First Dollar: Strategies and Ethics of Seed-Stage Fundraising" What is the right way to raise a seed round?  Even as founders strive to focus on innovation and execution, they must make myriad decisions, big and small, on fundraising.  Whom should I pitch first?  What's the smallest check I should accept?  Do I price the round or raise on a convertible note, and on what terms?  Join us as healthcare product designer, entrepreneur, and investor Ryan Pierce tests conventional wisdom against a survey of his peers, considers the ethics of taking early-stage money, and shares his own lessons from both sides of the table. Agenda 5:00 - 5:30 pm: Networking 5:30 - 6:30 pm: Talk and Q&A About the Speaker Ryan Pierce is Co-Founder and CEO of Nine, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Rock Health, and Lecturer in Bioengineering at Stanford, where he teaches BIOE 70Q: Medical Device Innovation.  He has served as VP of Design and Innovation at Ventus Medical, VP of Business Development at Loma Vista Medical, a healthcare investor at De Novo Ventures, and a product designer at Concentric Medical and The Foundry/Zephyr Medical.  An inventor on over two dozen issued U.S. patents, he has designed FDA-cleared devices to treat sleep apnea and stroke.  Ryan holds mechanical engineering degrees from MIT and Stanford, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.