🍄 The New Health Club #32 - Amanda Eilian: The business of new mental health is here.
Wild times ahead! The business of psychedelics is, you could say, booming and this week there is even more proof.
Early adopters and psilocybin avant gardists COMPASS from London are filing for IPO and will go public only four years after it was founded and they aim to “explore the use of a psychedelic compound found in so-called magic mushrooms for treating depression.” (Bloomberg). The founders are George Goldsmith, Ekaterina Malievskaia and Lars Christian Wilde and sources close to the company expect a pre-money IPO valuation of USD 500 – 600 million.
There’s more: on the COMPASS advisory board we have the famous neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt, and Robin Carhart Harris, Head of Imperial Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London. And just to complete the circle: the force behind the acceleration is Christian Angermayer, who made their success story possible. Christian added his long term colleague and friend Lars Wilde to the founding team of COMPASS. Lars had previously founded a tech company in Germany that Christian had also backed. When Lars had to quit that venture due to a severe anxiety disorder and depression, he found healing in magic mushrooms thanks to Christian’s support. Subsequently, Christian seed-funded COMPASS Pathways and also invited Mike Novogratz and Peter Thiel to join the consortium becoming early investors of that for-profit entity. Pre-IPO, COMPASS had already raised USD 117 million since its foundation, with most of that money coming from investors that Christian had introduced to the company.
Particularly here in Germany (a country that is traditionally lacking in entrepreneurs with vision and ambition), he became one of the few entrepreneurs worldwide by realising early the potential that the new world of psychedelics could have for the exploding mental health crisis. I guess it always takes a few evangelist and brave investors, especially one with a certain kind of “midas touch” who can understand and then support a whole new movement.
If his name sounds familiar, it’s because I had Christian on the podcast and show twice already, sharing his interesting perspectives on the industry and movement. If you missed it the first time around, you can catch up here!
YouTube Episode
And since this week is all about the big business questions, we’ve invited Amanda Eilian as guest on The New Health Club YouTube Show. Amanda and her company able partners is an early stage investor in psychedelics and in new ideas of mental wellness. Amanda invested also in COMPASS Pathways, as well as in our friends Synthesis and GOOP.
Eilian was the one of the first investors who realised how big the “wellness gap” is. This basically means: whilst our income is higher than ever, our physical and emotional wellbeing is dropping fast, and yes, Covid19 continues to support that alarming trend.
I met Amanda last year for our first podcast and I am really inspired by her talent and tenacity to pursue the exciting and unpredictable psychedelic industry and coming across as a stylish and serious person at the same time. In my opinion, this helps the movement to be acknowledged as serious business, an industry that’s dealing with some pressing questions of these times.
I really enjoy talking to Amanda about all these new adventures in wellness. We even touched upon Jack Dorsey's extreme diet and fasting frenzy.
But back to business: if you are interested in investing in psychedelics, listen to Amanda giving advice on just where your money could go these days.
Speaking of the decrim movement.
I am just putting together an upcoming episode with the superstars of the decriminalisation movement. Or “decrim” as Americans like to say. There is the amazing married mum of two called Melissa Lavasani who is leading the decrim movement in Washington, there is Daniel Carcillo Ex -Athlete and Pro, supporting the movement in Chicago and of course there is Sheri Bessi Eckert and Tom Eckert, the Portland Oregon Pros doing incredible work petitioning in Oregon.
So our Decrim-Special is coming soon, as well as my talk with my favourite Brazilian ayahuasca girl Bia Labate from the Chacruna Foundation.
You see… this world is growing and I love it more every day.
Of course, thanks Dr. Bronner’s for making all this possible!
The New Health Club Podcast features the special “Heal Soul!” series in collaboration with Dr. Bronner’s, the activist soap company from California. Dr. Bronner’s is a family-owned company founded in 1948, that is dedicated to honoring the vision of its founder, Emanuel Bronner, by making personal care products of the highest quality and by dedicating profits to promote a better world for all. The Bronner family started making soap in 1858 here in Germany, and carries on the family soap making tradition today, by using the company as an engine for progressive social change.
I got to know Dr. Bronner’s when I lived in Los Angeles and when I went shopping at Trader Joes, I made sure to pick up some of the delicious peppermint soap that all of us were using. It was just such a California thing, which I loved, but there is more to it.
Dr. Bronner’s dedicates profits to organisations working in support of regenerative organic agriculture, animal rights, community betterment, criminal justice reform, fair pay and fair trade, and drug policy reform – which includes the responsible and equitable integration of psychedelic medicine into American and global culture.
And please check out the February 27 episode of The New Health Club to hear my interview with their CEO and world-renowned psychedelic therapy activist, David Bronner, as we discuss how psychedelics might heal Holocaust trauma.