🧑💻From Tech to Funghi With Marcos Carvalho
Welcome back to "The Microdose Diet" newsletter, your trusted source for achieving success, passion, and happiness in life and career through alternative medicines like microdosing psychedelics. 🍄
My guest is Marcos Carvalho, a serial entrepreneur, who, in 2021, exited the company he co-founded, Nest Ready, a digital home buying platform for mortgage lenders. Since then he has moved to other things (better things?;)) and has been focusing on the psychedelic space.
Marcos and I were initially introduced last year by Jan Christopher Arp from the Holt Exchange as two kindred spirits who have crossed the Rubicon from Fintech to Psychedelics.
In this edition, you will learn about Marcos’ journey, his move to psychedelics, as well as the business models and companies he likes in the space.
Enjoy!
💵From Tech to Fungi
During his twelve years as a tech entrepreneur, Marcos launched four companies, and did the entire startup cycle a couple of times, from product ideations to scaling and exiting.
Like many entrepreneurs, he found entrepreneurship to be extremely difficult; the intense stress, long days, short nights, and many of these nights spent sleeping on the couch of the office. His life was a roller-coaster, in the morning he was excited, in the afternoon he was depressed. Having to keep a smile on his face in front of the team was very difficult, especially in an open space.
After divorcing for a second time in a few years, he went through some dark moments and started to try to reconnect with himself. He went back into life coaching, set up morning rituals, and that's when psychedelics started coming to him.
He became obsessed with the topic and couldn’t believe psychedelics were that efficient so he dug deep into the subject for six months. He really got intimate with it before trying himself and then his life changed. It was literally life-changing in a way that even his personality type changed and that most people didn't believe that it was possible. And he didn't believe it was possible either until he started comparing his personality test results.
The question Marcos, and all of us who have also tried psychedelics for healing had was “Couldn't I not have tried that before?” and then “Oh my God, maybe I could have tried that like ten or fifteen years ago. My life would have been so much more successful and pleasant.” But also “How come I didn't know about that before?”
🚀Expertise Transfer
Marcos has helped companies in the psychedelic-space raise money; some went public, some got acquired. But he saw the boom coming back in 2021. There was a lot of hype, with companies in the space going public and not really having anything to show for. Seeing there was a bubble, he decided to wait to build his own project.
So he went and spent two years in Europe. Now, Marcos believes that the market is much more mature and that we're going to see some consolidation. Only the best companies are going to be surviving.
Today Marcos brings all the expertise and the numerous skills he mastered scaling and accelerating companies to ventures in the space. He had learnt from some of the best tech accelerators in the world, like Techstars back in 2016, and is putting these lessons to good use.
What he witnessed in the psychedelic space was that most of those entrepreneurs came from academia or the scientific world, but did not have the privilege to go through those trainings, hard trainings that he went through.
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🍄The Future of the Psychedelic Space
Marcos really likes the clinical space because he believes that it is the entry door for democratizing access to psychedelics. Psychedelic Assisted Therapy, he thinks is the right way to do it with the right professionals, but today those clinics are struggling because regulations are not keeping up.
An Elegant Mind is a clinic Marcos works with. The founder is a very talented therapist combining sex therapy, couples therapy - which is something extremely important to improve the quality of family life - with ketamine assisted therapy. Soon she's going to add MDMA assisted therapy (when this becomes legal), and this will become a very unique offering.
Actors in the space are now combining and integrating different types of therapy with psychedelics, creating tailor-made services and therapies that will service a specific clientele and have a great impact on society. So focusing on making sure that those players can keep growing and innovate is very important.
Another clinic, SABI Mind in Calgary, differentiates themselves by creating a very unique user experience. They thought about every detail from the moment a client arrives in the clinic to the moment she lives. That's really a unique experience. They integrate hospitality, with integrative care and wellness.
Drug development is difficult because it requires a lot of capital to bring the drugs to phase one, phase two, and then phase three. It's very hard and there is not a lot of differentiation in the market when you develop synthetic drugs.
The key is to demonstrate that these new drugs work for a very targeted purpose. Clairvoyant Therapeutics is an example of such companies. It specifically focuses on alcohol use disorder.
Filament Health concentrates on developing drugs botanically which is a very interesting value proposition. The entourage effect of the molecules makes a big difference in drug development. And we know now that users prefer the natural approach so, at the end of the day, it is all about how companies position themselves.
In summary, we will see consolidation in the drug development space, but those companies who are able to keep financing their studies will have the competitive advantage and hopefully will be able to last long enough while regulations catch up. Being able to demonstrate specific usage and financing the study trials in different parts of the world will put these companies in a separate category
⚖️Regulations
Canada is advanced thanks to the special access program. Unfortunately, it's a very difficult process to go through. It needs to be streamlined and rebranded. It should be for everyone, it should not be rare and special.
Lobbying, civil disobedience and the grey markets will improve access and attract the attention of the authorities that hopefully will see that they need to regulate sooner rather than later.
As we go to phase three trials, governments will have to move faster.
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😎 About The Microdose Diet
I'm Peggy Van de Plassche, a former banker and VC with 20 years in financial services and technology. "The Microdose Diet" combines alternative medicines like microdosing psilocybin for personal and professional growth.
Pre-order my book, "MORE! The Microdose Diet - the 90 Day Plan for Success, Passion, and Happiness," available on Amazon.
🧠 The Brain Power Microdose: Supporting Cognitive Health and Stress Relief
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Remember, this newsletter is for entertainment and information. Always consult a medical professional for health advice. 🩺