How to Become a VC in the Psychedelic Therapeutic Space 💰 🍄

Tabula Rasa on Investing in Healthcare's Biggest Blindspots with Maria Velkova 🏥

If you want to learn about how one goes from living in a small town in Bulgaria to becoming a VC in the Psychedelic Therapeutic Space in NYC, you are in the right place. If you want to understand more about the investment opportunities in Healthcare's Biggest Blind spots and about the new paradigm in healthcare, once again you are in the right place! My guest is Maria Velkova, Managing Partner at Tabula Rasa Ventures. Maria not only oozes intelligence and great vibes, she has a wealth of experience and deep expertise in the space that she is not shy about sharing. Buckle up!! 🚀

You can access the full interview on YouTube by following the link embedded in the picture of Maria and I.

I am Peggy Van de Plassche, a former banker and VC who now speaks and writes about the psychedelic industry & the benefits of microdosing psilocybin. I created The Microdose Diet - the 90 Day Plan for Success and Happiness.

When Determination meets Preparation and Intentional Risk-taking ✅

Early in her career Maria made the purposeful decision to learn as much as she could about the healthcare industry. Her job as a consultant allowed her to do just that! For several years, while based in London, she worked alongside Big Pharma clients, such as Roche, AltraZeneca, or Pfizer, on everything from R&D, clinical trial designs, to regulatory strategy, commercial roll-out of blockbuster drugs, M&A and operations.

Once she thought she had accumulated enough knowledge she decided it was time to take everything she had learnt and contribute to the psychedelic therapeutic space. She was one of the pioneers in leaving Big Pharma and coming into this space. She not only left her job, she also left The UK, coming back to The US after +10 years across the pond. Her return to The US was also purposeful. Planning to go into VC, Maria understood that she had a better shot there where the Psychedelics Renaissance was already well-engaged.

Gathering Info and Acting upon it Boldly 🚀

Upon her return to The U.S., Maria mapped the psychedelic space to understand this “very new but ancient emerging space” in modern healthcare. During her discussions the name of Marik Hazan (her now business partner, or rather work husband, at Tabula Rasa Ventures) kept popping up. Marik had started Tabula Rasa back in 2018, when capital started flowing in the industry. His background, heavy in early-stage investing, was the perfect complement to her deep expertise in the healthcare space. She joined him in 2020.

Prior to launching the fund, Marik had built infrastructure for the psychedelic space, such as an incubator where 18 companies went through the 3 month process, resulting in already a couple of exits. They also started due diligencing deals and connecting companies to investors, helping them build a track record in the space. Maria & Marik also co-founded the Medical Psychedelics House of Davos, a conference hosting 85 of the top experts representative of the space including; non-profits, indigenous leaders, investors, entrepreneurs, clinicians, and policymakers.

“Redefining the care delivery model in psychiatry and mental health, from the ground up.”

Tabula Rasa Ventures; INVESTING IN HEALTHCARE’S BIGGEST BLIND SPOTS 🦯

Eight months ago Maria & Marek started raising a $25M fund focusing on drug development, clinical & medical infrastructure, digital therapeutics and tech in the psychedelic space. The first close of the fund happened in December, the team is now going through a second close with more than $7M committed. They started deploying capital in several exciting companies across the different verticals.

Investing as early as pre-seed, the fund not only allocate capital, it works alongside its portfolio companies for 3-6 months, helping them with executive recruitment, business development, partnerships, and introductions.

Zoom on a Couple of Exciting Portfolio Companies💸

2A Biosciences (Stealth), in the drug development space, is targeting its research on inflammation to treat conditions such as arthritis or skin inflammation. Beware: the pathway to commercialization can take up to 10 years!

Enthea, in the clinical and medical infrastructure space, is the first company to provide insurance for psychedelic-assisted therapy, starting with ketamine. The company leverages health benefits through the employers looking to support their employees’ mental-health (and at the same time decrease the costs associated with mental health issues). In order to validate the quality of the providers, Enthea built an accreditation process. Tabula Rasa VC is the lead investor in Enthea.

In the US, some estimates suggest that major depression alone is costing employers $31 billion to $51 billion per year in lost productivity.

The World Economic Forum reports that by 2030, the global costs of mental health problems will total over $6 trillion. 

Building the Future of Healthcare 🏥

Above and beyond psychedelics, Tabula Rasa focuses on therapeutic contexts that will transform the way we approach healthcare. Our healthcare systems have been built around diseases, which is in total contradiction with an HEALTHcare model. Even if changes are required, realistically it is impossible to flip the model on its head over a short period of time. Changes will be incremental and needs to be well though out, including our current system.

The long term vision of Tabula Rasa VC is to invest in innovations driving the current healthcare system into an health-first system, such as, prevention, health-optimization, regeneration, holistic healing. Psychedelics is the perfect place to start considering the trove of data already collected and the infrastructure needed. The psychedelic space is catalyzing the initial steps of the building blocks necessary for a system truly focused on affordable health.

Future funds will focus on preventative health and health optimization such as, regenerative medicines, holistic health, sexual health.

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Best time to Invest is Now 💰

Now is the best time to invest in psychedelics for a couple of reasons; 1) valuations have been correcting and are much more realistic; 2) a hype cycle is in the horizon.

In the biotech space, since 2018, 62 companies went public, only 10 of these companies are still in operation today and have lost 90% of their value. A quarter of these companies have lost more than 50%. It will probably get a little bit worse before it gets better (if you want to try to time the market 😀).

We are back in an investor market!

With their skillset, experience, network and investment thesis Tabula Rasa VC is ideally positioned to benefit from the current market conditions.

Minimum investment is US$250K, with no co-investment fees for investment >US$1M.

You can contact the team here.

A Story of Resilience - Back to the Origins 💊

Born and raised in a small town in Bulgaria, Maria immigrated to The U.S. when she was 10. The culture shock was very intense, so much so that the experience resulted in trauma shock for Maria. After high-school, she moved back to Europe and studied in The UK. With a pharmacology undergrad and a Master in bioscience enterprise from Cambridge under her belt, Maria checked all the boxes. However, despite her impressive curriculum she didn’t feel fulfilled at all.

In parallel, her interest for neuropsychopharmacology - the study of the neural mechanisms that drugs act upon to influence behavior - led her to question why psychedelics were not covered in the university curriculum. Despite the fact that these medicines were highly researched and prescribed in the 50’s and 60’s before Nixon’s reckless war on drugs.

This combination is what made her passionate about psychedelics and led her to her current path…for the benefit of us all!

If you missed the interview of Melissa Lavasani, Founder and President of the Psychedelic Medicine PAC and Founder and Chief Executive Officer at the Psychedelic Medicine Coalition you can watch it, listen to it or read about it!

If you are interested in knowing more about me, you can visit my website or my YouTube channel.

This newsletter is designed to entertain and inform, not provide medical (or financial) advice. You should always consult your doctor when it comes to your personal health or before you start any treatment.