Mark Yde: Hector Ventures

Join Mark Yde of Hector Ventures and Joel Palathinkal as they explore Mark's venture capital journey. Mark discusses his family influences, initial interest in law, and the role of intellectual property and technology in healthcare. They also explore the potential of psychedelics in neuroscience and PTSD treatment. Mark highlights how sales skills translate to venture capital, emphasizing networks, partnerships, and sales tactics. He addresses imposter syndrome, the impact of travel, and building credibility across sectors. The episode wraps up with audience questions on favorite investments, storytelling, and advice for aspiring LPs.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
And now they're probably one of my mostvaluable partners, and I'm not invested with

(00:04):
them, but we share deals all the time.
And so, yeah, that's sort of a it was anotherpoint of edification for me that you need to be
able to make commitments of time, acting likeyou're too cool as a venture capitalist, and
that you know everything is not going to getyou far.
Especially nowadays, when venture capital is sosaturated, everybody has money, there's
billions and billions of dollars pouring intobiotech.

(00:26):
I have not very much money compared to a lot ofthese big institutional VCs.
But I'm also willing to travel and meet peopleand get in shared deal flow.
So I think that was a big differentiator for meright away.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I,Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the

(00:47):
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
Sounds good.

(01:09):
Cool.
So I think we are live.
We're all set here.
Looks like it's kicking off, but we have MarkYudai from Hector Ventures.
So excited to have you here.
It's been great chatting with you the lastcouple of days and learning more about your
background and you have a really interestingcareer.
There's a lot of parallels that I have, workingin big companies, trying to stimulate

(01:34):
innovation at big companies and also pivotingmy career a few times too.
So really excited to learn more.
Mark, thanks for being generous with your timeand offering up some mentorship.
So why don't we kick it off and learn a littlemore about your background and your career?
Where did you grow up?
What did your parents do?
And what did you think your career was gonnabe?

(01:56):
And tell us the whole story of how it evolved.
And I know you've got some VC travel stories aswell.
So excited.
I feel like that's gonna be part of thehighlight this discussion.
And I know you got to be a little anonymous,excited to hear a lot all that stuff.
Storytelling is really the heart of venturecapital.
Yeah, yeah, sounds good.

(02:17):
And thanks for having me on.
I'm pretty excited.
This will be only my second podcast ever and myfirst live stream.
So I'm pretty pumped.
Nice.
Yeah, so I grew up in DC, just outside DC inCollege Park, Maryland.
My so my dad was an M and A lawyer, he'sactually my co managing partner now for Hector

(02:37):
Ventures because he just retired from his lawposition.
But he was an M and A lawyer in pharma for along time.
My mom is an activist, but also a stay at homemom in a lot of regards because my oldest
brother is pretty severely autistic.
And that informs a lot of what I ended up doingwith this career choice as well.
But we can get into that in a little bit.

(02:58):
I really had no direction coming out of highschool.
I had friends who knew they want to be doctors,knew they want to be lawyers or economists.
My brother and my dad are both trainedeconomists.
My brother's a PhD at UVA currently.
But I didn't really have a lot of direction.
I started taking biology classes and economicsclasses undergrad and my freshman year, but I

(03:19):
pretty quickly fell in love with psychology.
And that translated quickly into me movingtowards neuroscience.
And that was really my first instance ofgetting acquainted with science as a practice.
I got involved in some labs at the Universityof Rochester, where I was doing my undergrad
degree.
And I just kept building from there.
Worked on some genetics projects, some publichealth projects, but everything was ultimately

(03:42):
oriented towards mental health and neuroscienceand psychology.
But towards the end of my career, I wasrealizing that I still or sorry, my undergrad
career, I was realizing I still didn't knowwhat I wanted to do next.
And I wasn't sold on doing the medical schoolroute.
I thought maybe I would do a PhD in cognitiveneuroscience.
But because I was still playing that choice, Idecided to hedge my bets and also pick up a

(04:07):
business degree.
So that ended up being a really good decision.
So I did I wrapped up a business degree inabout a year and a half at the end of my career
at U of R.
What the friends in your community or familycommunity do?
Because I mean, when I grew up in Florida,venture and investing wasn't really talked
about, you know, it was really either, know,especially in Florida hospitality and

(04:29):
healthcare is a huge industry.
So they were, you know, really like, hey, tryto get a tech job or work in IT or try to
become a medical doctor.
But, you know, what were your parents trying toadvise you to do?
Then obviously just your family network andjust kind of where you grew up, what were most
of the typical industries in that area?

(04:50):
Yeah, well, I think my family definitely had avery creative approach or different approach
just because of our familial situation and mybrother.
And they were always open to me doing whateverI wanted.
They wanted me to pursue my goals and figureout what I wanted to do.
And they didn't really foist any goals upon me.
For a lot of my high school career, I thought Iwas gonna be a professional athlete, which I

(05:11):
think a lot of kids do when they're involved inlevel high school athletics.
I didn't cultivate a lot of the intellectualinterest that I had until later on in high
school.
But definitely growing up outside DC, everybodywas involved in government in some capacity.
All of my dad's friends were obviously lawyers,but most of them were more involved with the
Federal Trade Commission or the Department ofJustice.

(05:35):
And I would say probably three quarters of mygraduating class ended up doing internships at
congressional offices.
So everybody was really geared towards thepolitical side.
I think science was an interest of a lot of myfriends, but nobody was really getting pushed
in that direction.
And I certainly wasn't either.
Thought I would take the law route.

(05:55):
And I think a lot of kids are just like, I'lldo what my parents do.
So I thought maybe I would end up getting a lawdegree.
But really, I wasn't sure.
Yeah, yeah, and you got to do what makes youhappy.
So I'm assuming when you thought about the lawdegree, that probably wasn't something that got
you really excited, I'm assuming.
No, well, don't know, maybe back then it did.
It's, you know, it's hard to say in retrospect,but I'm finding now that I actually am really

(06:19):
interested in intellectual property.
And I think that's something that comes from,playing around in the biotech and the med tech
space, you realize how important the legalprocess is in innovating.
And I think intellectual property has becomereally important.
I've actually revisited the idea of maybebuilding on some education in law.
Yeah,
there yeah, I mean, I'm an investor in a couplehealthcare companies.

(06:42):
And one thing that I've learned from IP is, youknow, you can create an IP portfolio.
So if you build some type of technology thatunique casing, and the unique packaging and the
shape of it all comes together as like aportfolio.
So all of those individual things could beassets that you would own the rights to.

(07:05):
So that's been something that I've beenlearning.
But what else have you learned with your deeperexperience in healthcare, just on the IP side,
some trends to consider?
Yeah, well, maybe we could, yeah, I can touchon what we're trying to do in the space and
then maybe that'll help color the IP landscape.
So we we formed Hector ventures, basically totap into what I was seeing in the psychedelic

(07:29):
space.
And I've had a lot of intellectual interest inpsychedelics for a long time because of my work
in neuroscience.
And basically, didn't want to miss the bus.
I was working in a job where I wasn't reallyhappy at the time doing corporate development.
And also, there's a million ways to think nowabout what happened a year ago when I formed
Hector Ventures.

(07:50):
But that was also some trends in the cryptospace that were supporting me leaving my job.
Yeah, we initially started investing inpsychedelics.
We're invested across a few funds.
Neuroscience, I mean, But psychedelics is justone aspect of neuroscience or of
neuropsychiatric innovation.
There's medical technology and biotechnologies.

(08:10):
And being in Boston right now, I'm exposed to alot of those different technologies like cells
and gene therapy.
So there's a lot to do.
There's tons of different ways to innovateneuroscience, not to mention software.
So intellectual property plays a huge part inthat.
And that's because biotech and med tech andmental health and medicine are very different

(08:32):
venture capital arenas than something moretraditional like software as a service or
software in general marketplaces, etc.
Because oftentimes, you're not going to seerevenue from a drug or see revenue from medical
device for ten years, because they have to gothrough the entire clinical regulatory process.
And what that means is you have to look forvalue otherwise or other places within these

(08:57):
companies.
You have to understand the IP landscape inorder to project outward and see where they
might succeed.
So when I look at companies, and I think when alot of people look at companies, they're
looking for platform technologies in thebiotech space.
And that means that you want to see a companywith a patent estate, not just one IP item, one
filed composition of matter patent around adrug, but they want to see a patent estate

(09:20):
covering manufacturing processes, covering thecomposition of matter, covering trademarks,
covering all sorts of different intellectualproperty items.
So that's what I like to see.
I like companies that have way more than onepatent and especially across different areas.
And I think in psychedelics, in particular,there's a type of patent called a risk and
mitigation strategy.

(09:42):
And that it sounds like a weak area of IP,because it's sort of just a strategic effort.
It's not really a it's not a composition ofmatter.
It's not an item.
It's not hard.
It's not hardware.
But in reality, that's really important to havea strategy for mitigating risk within some of
these therapeutic contexts.
So there's a lot of different ways to thinkabout intellectual property, but I think it

(10:02):
plays a more central role in biotech and medtech than it does in any of the other sort of
consumer spaces or software spaces.
Got it.
And we're both buddies with Brahm.
I was fortunate to and I hope I get to do thiswith you too, but I got to hang out with him in
person, he visited me in New York.
So that's kind of a new thing for me, wheneverVCs come to New York, I try to show him around

(10:25):
a little bit and hang out with him.
So he unpacked the psychedelic space for me andyou started touching on this, right?
It's really one section of neurotechnologies.
One thing that him and I did not talk about isNeuralink.
So hardware, consumer products, do you see thatevolving?
Because what Elon Musk believes is there'sthings that he can do with Neuralink where he

(10:48):
can correct vision, he can get people to walk.
So I'm not sure if those are things that you'relooking at too, kind of augmenting the body
with hardware integrated in with software.
Then obviously there's risks, right?
What if it causes bleeding or if there's somehead trauma from the hardware?
So we'd love to hear, number one, your take onhow to unpack the neurotechnology space,

(11:15):
including psychedelics, then just hardware andsoftware.
Gotcha.
Yeah, and honestly, I haven't dug intoNeuralink too much.
I don't want to speak to that directly.
But primarily, I'm focused on medicalintervention.
So there's I mean, I think Neuralink is morepoised for augmentation.
How can we make people's thinking better?

(11:36):
Or how can we augment reality to make it betterfor us?
And I'm not that isn't really my space ofexpertise.
Really like medical innovations because theproblem is defined.
I think a lot with tech companies and softwarecompanies in general, they always pitch
themselves as solving some sort of problem.
But in reality, they're creating an advantagethat then becomes a problem for other people

(11:57):
not to have.
So they're creating the market like Uber.
You can say Uber was solving a problem, but inreality, they were creating a new market.
Whereas with medical innovation, the market isthere, the patients are there, and they have a
really strict need for healing.
So I guess that was sort of a tangent.
Brahm touched on this really well in segmentingthe psychedelic market and touching on where

(12:20):
it's going be valuable.
But yeah, I'm looking at a few areas.
So I think medical technology, you're referringto hardware devices are going to be really
important.
But I also think biologics like cell therapiesand gene therapies, when you hear about CRISPR,
you're talking about biological therapies.
And then psychedelics is more traditionalthinking about pharmaceuticals.

(12:41):
And people don't want to say that psychedelicfits in the pharmaceutical model, but it does,
and it will have to in order for innovationactually to commercialize.
So those are sort of the three areas.
Would say psychedelics in small molecules orpharmaceuticals, then biotechnology or
biologics, and then medical technology, whichis could encompass hardware and software as a

(13:02):
medical device, which is actually a trendingfield right now.
And I think those all have their ownadvantages.
They all have risk benefit profiles thatdiffer.
And you have to always think about innovationsin that space with relation to a specific
disease.
So you can't just say in general, psychedelicsare going to cure everything.
Right now, that's something that people do saythey refer to psychedelics like they're a

(13:25):
panacea, where they're going to cureschizophrenia, they're going to cure autism,
they're going to cure anxiety, depression,PTSD.
And I don't think that's the case.
And I don't think that's where the science ispointing.
I think psychedelics have a really clear path.
And they have tons of clinical and anecdotalevidence showing that they're going to help
with certain mood disorders.

(13:46):
That's the class that I would put them ashaving the most benefit.
So mood disorders are things like anxiety,intractable depression.
Sometimes people will characterize posttraumatic stress disorder as a mood disorder.
But I think medical technology hardware isgoing to have its own play.
Think for neurodevelopmental disorders likeautism, I think medical technology has a better

(14:07):
risk benefit profile.
And I think that has a lot to do with the factthat autism has poor diagnostic criteria.
So certain drugs aren't amenable to theclinical pathway, But medical technology has a
different regulatory pathway that perhaps makesit more amenable to neurodevelopmental
disorders.
And the same goes for biologics.

(14:28):
Think neurodegeneration is going to be capturedby biologics.
So think things like Parkinson's andAlzheimer's, where the brain is actually
deteriorating.
Those are going to be tapped into by biologicaltherapies.
And that's actually a space I worked onrecently when I was doing some consulting for
an academic neuroscience venture fund.

(14:49):
So I'm really excited about the biologic spaceas well.
Yeah, no, it's exciting.
Do you see software also augmenting thepsychedelic space?
Because usually the medium is using some typeof medication, right?
But do you think, I don't know, mean, is crazy,but maybe there's some type of virtual reality
or some type of software that could kind of getyou to the same type of sensation that you

(15:13):
would feel when you're on psychedelics.
Do you think that would ever happen in thefuture?
Yeah, that's a good question.
Think so there's a few ways to address it.
I think virtual reality and augmented realityare going to play a big role in integration
therapy for psychedelics.
So I think augmenting drugs and you can alsothink about drug device combinations is an area

(15:35):
I'm really, really keen on is, is how can youcombine traditional medical technology with
traditional drugs in order to augment both orto increase the efficacy of a therapy.
But there's also this trend, which I'm sureyou've heard of if you're in New York, digital
therapeutics.
So this is a new class where people areactually seeking to get digital programs

(15:58):
reimbursed by insurance for differentindications like depression or obsessive
compulsive disorder, and in some cases,obesity.
And I think it's interesting from a commercialperspective, I really like the idea of applying
software to the medical space because softwareis scalable in a way that manufacturing
processes for drugs or medical devices are not.

(16:21):
Software is virtual space.
So it's extremely scalable.
It's easy to implement and easy to get higherpatient compliance.
But the case is I don't think digitaltherapeutics will ever be as effective.
And this is just an intuition.
But anybody who's ever taken a drug, especiallya psychedelic or some sort of benzodiazepine or
an antidepressant knows that the effect isnoticeable.

(16:45):
And that's pretty important.
A digital therapeutic is going to be extremelysafe because it's so low power.
So I'm not super attracted to that space as away to cure diseases.
I think it has a lot of commercial potential,especially like I'm saying, as an adjuvant to
some of the traditional medical technologies orsmall molecules, but I'm not super attracted to

(17:08):
digital therapeutics in and of themselves.
It could just augment the real therapeuticsprobably as if you're trying to wean off of
something maybe.
Don't know think that.
Yeah, I mean, I've seen people with posttraumatic stress, I've seen this in the past
where people in the military, have like virtualreality headsets that have been proven to be

(17:29):
more calming.
So I think some of those digital experiencesnow, heading into the metaverse, going into a
virtual world where you can have maybe asupport group or do something that's more
relaxed and maybe that could help with posttraumatic stress.
Is that a sector as well of like the patientsthat are seeking psychedelics therapy, people
who have like PTSD from the military or is thata different market?

(17:52):
Yeah, that's a huge market.
It's actually a really interesting sort ofcultural phenomenon as well, because
traditionally, we think of military communitiesas highly conservative and not willing to go
after these sort of woo woo drugs likepsychedelics.
But there's huge traction.
And a lot of these veteran support groups andbig veteran lobby groups are leading the charge

(18:14):
for legalization, especially decriminalizationin states at the state level, but also
legalization for different medical researchinstitutes to start leveraging some of these
drugs in clinics.
So yeah, that's a really interestingphenomenon.
I think there's a lot of veterans and activemilitary who have these conditions who are keen

(18:34):
on getting those drugs into the market forthemselves and for their community at large.
But yes, certainly PTSD, right now one of themost advanced clinical trials is MDMA for PTSD,
which is being run by MAPS, which is a bigmultidisciplinary association for psychedelic
studies.
They're one of the true leaders in this spaceand they led a lot of the initial legalization

(18:57):
efforts.
But yeah, that's one of the most advancedindications for treatment is PTSD with MDMA.
Yeah, I want to take a step back and go back toyour career because I think we jumped into your
thesis and the strategy that you're tacklingwith your investment approach.
But I think there was a couple of details thatyou talked to me about as far as just career

(19:22):
journey.
What was going on in your mind when yourealized that you wanted to be a VC?
I know you worked at a couple of largecompanies.
I think you also transitioned a little bit intocorporate strategy.
So maybe tell us kind of that transitionalpoint because some of the people on this call
are people who are looking to start their ownfund.
They're also looking to possibly just pivottheir career into a full time investor role.

(19:45):
Some of these people come from tech andproduct.
So what was going on in your mind and you knowmaybe while you're doing that maybe kind of
drop in a couple suggestions on how people canthink about just their whole career journey as
a whole.
Yeah yeah that's a great point and actuallyit's I think it's a really important point
because I struggled with this for a long time.

(20:06):
And I think science in general is a place wherepeople struggle with careers.
And I experienced myself when I left the U ofR.
And that's part of the reason I picked up thebusiness degree because I started to realize
that there weren't a lot of careers out there,or at least ways that I knew how to make a
career out of my training.
So I went to the NIH and I did a brief stint, afellowship in neurogenetics, where I ended up

(20:29):
working with some pretty cool models,optogenetics, you shine light on a mouse brain
that you've gene edited, and you can light updifferent neurons.
But in retrospect, it's pretty sci fi crazy.
But I wasn't happy in the lab because I feelthat I'm really I like to communicate, I like
to communicate science, I like to think aboutscience and the philosophy behind science, but

(20:50):
I don't necessarily like doing the tasks, therepetitive tasks that lab work entails.
So I ended up not wanting to pursue the PhDroute that I was trending towards.
And then I really didn't know what to do.
So I started applying everywhere I saw onLinkedIn.
And I felt just based on some conversationswith friends that sales was the easiest way to
break out of sort of a fixed career path and dosomething new.

(21:15):
If you can communicate, you can do sales in alot of regards, especially if you have a
technical background.
So I moved and I went and I worked for aCanadian company that was leveraging some
pretty awesome technologies to develop new invitro models.
And I was doing technical sales, and I ended uploving that.
Was sort of the first time in my life I feltreally confident doing what I was doing.

(21:37):
And that was communicating science, talkingwith PhDs.
And I also felt pretty hot on myself becausemost of the other salespeople at that company
were PhDs.
I was coming out of it without a singleadvanced degree, not even a master's.
So I felt pretty good about myself.
I felt pretty smart.
And I trended there and I was doing reallywell.
And I got promoted and I was doing field sales.

(21:58):
And then I think a little bit of blindambition, but also just general ambition led me
to go work at a startup where they were justgoing pay me more and give me a management
title.
And the experience there was edifying in a lotof ways.
And I won't get into too many ways it wasedifying in the negative sense, but it was
enough for me to give me the impetus to finallyleave and pursue what I'd wanted to do, which

(22:23):
was think deeply about neuroscience.
And I'd also had some experience in the publicequity market where I'd been trading based on
what I saw as biotech fundamentals.
So how did the technologies work?
Are they going to work?
Are the drugs going to work?
And I had been trading in the public marketsbased on what I saw as technical knowledge and
failing because in reality, public equitymarkets are tied a lot to consumer sentiment

(22:46):
and psychology, and nowadays especially tied today trader sentiment.
So that for me was another thing where Irealized if I want to make money betting on
neuroscience companies, it's gonna to be in theprivate markets, it's going to have to be in
venture capital.
And that also made me more differentiatedbecause I was able to analyze companies before
they were in the private market just based onsome sort of technical knowledge in

(23:08):
neuroscience and genetics.
So all in all, that's how I got to the placewhere I was at.
I formed my LLC, sort of on a whim to invest inone fund that I was really attracted to.
And then we got off to the races, I started tobuild some traction in a real big personal
network within the psychedelic sphere.
And I was loving, I was loving every aspect,looking at companies, talking to entrepreneurs,

(23:31):
talking to other venture capitalists couldn'thave been more intellectually and emotionally
rewarding.
And also, within psychedelics, there's aparticularly interesting crop of people.
I mean, it's confluence of, of hippies andneuroscientists and regulatory professionals.
And, I mean, there are a lot of gamers andcrypto people as well, who were just made their

(23:51):
millions and then wanted to put into somethingthat they saw as ethical.
So I met a lot of crazy people a lot.
Met a lot of really smart people.
I met a fair amount of charlatans and peoplewho were just trying to make a quick buck in
the space as well.
Yeah, so yeah, I'd love to touch on that somemore because I think personal networking, what
I learned in sales actually translated reallywell to what I ended up doing over the last

(24:13):
year or so.
You know, it's funny too because the chat thatI had with Brahm, it's on YouTube.
I mean, we started talking about happiness, youknow, because he was working at a hedge fund,
and look, I've sold out too, right?
I mean, in the past, I've taken a job becauseof the pay.
I'm like, look, you know what, I'll just getpaid more, it's a big company, I'll save some

(24:37):
money up, but the downstream impacts reallyjust kind of make you not really happy with
what you're doing and you're also kind ofwasting your time, So, the money doesn't really
make up for you.
You end up maybe using, just kind of saving itup for whatever you need, Brahm was kind of
talking about that and a lot of other peoplethat kind of pivoted into VC, they were in very

(25:00):
lucrative jobs that paid well, but they justdidn't want to invest kind of their time into
something that's not aligned with theirpurpose.
So was that also kind of going on in your headbecause you did take some great roles and what
was like the trigger point that said, Screw it,I'm gonna get into venture.
And I think you also started doing somesyndicates as well, I guess, to kind of build

(25:22):
the community and the network.
But do you remember that trigger point thatsaid, Hey, you know what, that's it, I'm gonna
turn around and, you know, launch this S corpor holding company and kick things off?
Yeah, for sure.
And I think initially, like I said, the firstcompany I was with couldn't have been better.
I mean, was when you work in sales, especiallycoming out of a lab, it's exponential learning.

(25:47):
And I was working at the perfect company.
And this is what I when I talk to undergradsnow, is the biggest I give them is getting to
sales because consulting, it's a crapshoot.
If you're not the
top of your class, you're not going
to go work at Deloitte, or Bain or whatever.
And you're certainly not going to get a job outof venture capital group, you're not going work
for Bain Capital.
Yeah.

(26:07):
And I knew that about myself.
Was just realistic.
Like I, spent a lot of time in my frat kind ofmessing around.
And I had great grades, but it was all trendingtowards the research route.
So sales quickly taught me a lot of what I needto know about the business world.
In sales, you interact with every aspect, everypart of the organisational architecture within

(26:28):
the company.
So you work with manufacturing, you work withthe supply chain guys, you have to work with
finance in a lot of regards and accounting.
Then certainly, you're always involved inoperations as well.
And then the sales, what people call softskills from sales are, I mean, it's just a
misnomer.
I mean, everybody who can communicate doesbetter in whatever role they're working in.

(26:49):
It doesn't matter if it's finance oraccounting.
So I learned how to communicate.
I learned how to make value propositions, whichI think are, are something that people just
don't really key on when they're makingpitches, don't really understand the concept of
value proposition.
They think that they just have to sell aproduct, which is their company.
But in reality, you have to sell therelationship of a venture capitalist to that

(27:12):
product.
How do you create value for the venturecapitalists?
How do you make it a win win situation?
How do you empathize with the people on theother side of the call?
So all those things are really important for meto learn off the bat.
And I think so when I left and went to theother company, I wanted to get some experience
working on licensing and corporate development.
And I got that more of those internal sort oftechnical roles.

(27:33):
But I picked up on the symptoms pretty quicklyof myself regressing to some of the tendencies
I had when I was, I guess, a less motivatedperson.
So I all of sudden I was getting home from workand playing video games, again, of reading,
which I'm a really avid reader.
So I was playing video games incessantly.
And I was like, why am I doing this?
I was having headaches all the time.
Was staring at screens too much.

(27:55):
And I just realized that I mean, I couldcontinue to do this because they were paying me
really well.
Or I could chase a dream as much as that soundslike a cliche.
But so I did it.
So I just left.
I mean, hedged my bets a little bit by startingthe LLC before I left and making my first fund
investment.
But yeah, that's how it worked out.

(28:15):
That's how it shaped up.
So we've got a question here, which could be atactical piece of advice for one of the people
here.
So Manveer had a question, how do you finddeals?
Do they come to you?
So I normally get them through two channels,whether they're either inbound or outbound, but
how are you sourcing and screening and what aresome criteria that you look for when you find a

(28:41):
quality deal that's part of your thesis?
Yeah, that's a good question.
And yeah, I keep making these comparisons abouthow biotech and med tech is different from
other investment sectors, but it really iscentral to the investing strategy here.
And it also relates to what sort of skills youneed to get into VC for biotech and med tech.

(29:03):
You don't need a finance background to dobiotech and medtech investing.
You don't need to have experience withfinancial forecasting, because these companies
aren't generating revenue.
I haven't invested in a company yet that'sgenerating any form of revenue.
So you're not going to use annual recurringrevenue as a metric to forecast where a company
is trending.
You can't rely on brand entrenchment oranything like that.

(29:25):
So you have to really understand the technicalfundamentals.
You have to understand the total addressablemarket, which speaks, I guess, to the big
patient classes, like how many people have PTSDin the world?
Is the FDA approving these for marketing?
And are they going to be reimbursed by the bigpayer insurance systems?
So there's all sorts of factors in there.

(29:47):
But like I mentioned before, think intellectualproperty is central.
So I'm not going look at a company if they justhave a brand and a consumer product and no IP,
especially in psychedelics.
I really like companies that have a good patentestate, a good IP portfolio.
And that's not quantitative, but qualitativematters as well.
In terms of that's just a point on my initialfirst line due diligence.

(30:10):
But in terms of deal sourcing, it's all aboutbuilding a personal network.
You can get on AngelList and shop around andlook for cool deals.
But I think Brahm touched on this in the lastcall too, where he talks about how in the
public equities market, you can buy data fromBloomberg.
But if the data is there, it's already beencreated and everybody else can leverage it.
You're losing your opportunity for arbitrage.

(30:32):
I think the same goes for venture capital.
And the data is even scarcer.
So it creates a better opportunity forarbitrage.
But so back to my initial point, it's all aboutbuilding a personal network, You're going to
get the best deals from people that you knowreally well, that you know intimately, that you
trust and that want to work with you.
And that's what I learned that from sales, butI translated it really quickly.

(30:54):
That's where I wanted to touch on some of theseVC travel stories is early on after I invested
in another point is, in order to get the fundoff the ground, I invested in other funds.
And I made connections with those funds becauseI wanted to get access to their proprietary
deal flow.
I wanted to learn from them.
I wanted to know about their due diligenceprocess as well.
And they'll open that up to you because cash isthe name of the game.

(31:16):
So if you're willing to pay them, you'rewilling to be a limited partner.
Are they
in the psychedelic space as well?
Or were they just in different sectors?
So initially, we just invested in psychedelics.
Right now we're going around to neurosciencesoftware funds.
But yeah,
it was initially just psychedelics.
And I'm not as a solo GP.

(31:36):
You have to be realistic about how much youknow as well.
Can't.
If you think you're a genius, you're not goingto make it very far.
If you're not willing to leverage the peoplearound you and their expertise, and I'm not a
PhD, for example, but I want to invest inneuroscience.
So I have a basic neuroscience understanding.
But what that means is not that I'm able toassess every deal, I'm able to assess the

(31:57):
people who are looking at these deals andassess their process for due diligence.
Do they have a good understanding ofpharmacology?
Are they approaching the intellectual propertyin a way that makes sense?
Do they understand the regulatory pathway forthese drugs?
So I was able to assess that pretty quicklywhen I was looking at the funds.
Invested in a few blue chip Keystonepsychedelic funds.

(32:17):
But then from there, was just building personalnetworks.
So whenever anybody invited me to meet, if theyeven had any sort of value potential, was
meeting with them, whether virtually or inperson.
And I was willing to take the risks of my timeearly on, because time is money, but I was
willing to risk a lot of my time to meet theright people.

(32:38):
So, for example, one of the stories I wanted totouch on is I had connected through a sort of
three degrees of separation, random connectionthrough my dad to one of these early seed
series A stage psychedelic funds.
And they invited me to come and visit theirfarm, which was out in the middle of New York.

(33:00):
And they ran a nonprofit as well.
So they wanted me to visit and see theirnonprofit and get a sense for what they're
doing.
And they gave me the directions.
It like five hours away from my apartment inBoston.
And up until the Friday when I supposed was toleave, was like, Why am I doing this?
I don't even know these guys.
They're inviting me to a farm with no cellservice.

(33:20):
They could just be major psychedelic hippieswho don't even have a good portfolio.
Yeah.
But after just thinking about it more, waslike, you have to take the risks like this.
And I ended up going out there and spending aday with them.
And it was one of the most rewardingexperiences of my life.
And it's also and it's not like we're out theredoing psychedelics or anything.

(33:40):
We're just meeting, we're talking, we'rediscussing venture capital, we're discussing
ethics and thinking about they have a reallykeen sense of what's happening in the veteran
community.
So we're talking about that.
And now they're probably one of my mostvaluable partners, and I'm not invested with
them, but we share deals all the time.
And so, yeah, that's sort of it was anotherpoint of edification for me that you need to be

(34:03):
able to make commitments of time, acting likeyou're too cool as a venture capitalist, and
that you know everything is not going to getyou far, Especially nowadays, when when venture
capital is so saturated, everybody has money,there's billions and billions of dollars
pouring into biotech, I have not very muchmoney compared to a lot of these big
institutional VCs.

(34:24):
But I'm also willing to travel and meet peopleand get in share deal flow.
So I think that was a big differentiator for meright away.
Those founders that you back today could comeinto liquidity, and possibly be your LP for
fund three, right?
Mean, so I posted something yesterday saying,look, know, being an LP is going be as common

(34:46):
as being an angel.
So, you know, LPs and angel investing, it's thesame thing.
I totally agree.
I've been harping on this for the last fewmonths.
I mean, people will invest in a fund just toget access because it's gonna be much more
streamlined to have that fund almost be yourscout, right?
They've already gone through investmentcommittee, they've already sourced and screened

(35:09):
a deal, they've written several memos, theyprobably have analysts that are doing the
research.
So they're surfacing up an index of the bestpsychedelics deals, and you could try to do
that on your own, but that's a lot of work.
And you're kind of shooting in the dark wherethose people, especially your emerging
managers, they're judged on their performance.

(35:30):
So they have to really outperform to get tofund two.
So really that is augmenting your sourcing.
And then what's great is if you wanna get intoWeb3, you don't have to go on 20 different
Discords.
Hopefully there's a really talented Web3 personthat's plugged in that can also serve as an
index.
So there are benefits to the fund investing andthen also if you can get access to the

(35:53):
underlying co investments, that's a win win aswell because you've got kind of the research
and the knowledge that's getting summarized toyou within the reports or however much time
they'll give you, but then you also kind ofalso have those deals that are sourced.
And that's a cause.
Mean, you try to do that yourself, you have tohire an analyst or an associate and try to do

(36:15):
that on your own, which obviously you should dowhen you have an institutional firm.
But I think I'm seeing a lot more funds havethis hybrid strategy where they, and I'm one of
them too, I mean, carving out a little bit ofallocation to be able to get access to the fund
structure.
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.

(36:37):
I think a lot of just based on the messages Iget on my inbox for people who want to start a
career or want to invest or whatever, they missthe point of the value proposition that I was
touching on earlier.
They'll come in and they'll I mean, not if noteveryone begs, but they'll say things like I
really need your support or whatever.
But people don't respond to that, especiallybusy people.

(36:58):
And I do respond typically because I'm stillearly stage, I'm trying to make connections,
but people respond to value.
So if you're not able to invest in a fund, cashand become an LP, you have to somehow generate
your own proprietary sense for deal flow fordeal sourcing.
And a lot of that is just having moreconnections in the opposite direction.
So right now, I'm syndicating my first dealinto a med tech company.

(37:23):
But I have psychedelic LPs who want to startgetting access to drug device combinations,
which are going to be a big trend, I think, inthe psychedelic space.
So they're poised to assess psychedelicmolecules and clinical models, but they have no
acquaintance with anybody in the medicaltechnology space.
Now, the flow of power is in the oppositedirection where they're asking me to come in,

(37:44):
help them find deals.
In some cases, they're paying me forconsulting.
But yeah, I think it's really important just toremember value propositions, but also remember
that value has to flow both ways.
I got a pretty, I guess, rude awakening to thatpoint, when maybe I was getting a little bit
too hot on myself, like six months ago, and Iwas taking pitches from a couple of funds.

(38:06):
And one of the funds I was not particularlyimpressed with their due diligence process.
Think they I thought they had been piggybackingoff other funds and not relying on technical
analysis.
So I just during the call, I could tell that Iwas just kind of low energy.
Wasn't smiling a lot.
You know, I just I don't think I came across asa happy or a nice guy.

(38:27):
And then three months later, I realized Ineeded LPs for my first syndication.
And I would turn around, I was asking this guyto invest with me.
So you have to be flexible in the way youapproach the deals and think about what could
happen in the future.
The value isn't always going to be cash flowingfrom your pocket to someone else's.
The cash can turn around pretty quickly.

(38:47):
Flow the opposite direction as well.
Yeah, so I'm also as I'm listening to you, I'mextracting some nuggets.
And I think some things that I'm extracting islook, you know, everybody has a different
superpower and skill set.
I think yours is sales and couple things that Ican double click on from that is when you had
that experience and you took that meeting, Ithink typical sales skill is, you never know

(39:12):
what you're gonna get, you could miss out on anopportunity, you don't have an open mind.
So having an open mind, having that emotionalintelligence, that's one piece.
And then the other piece is also what I heardfrom you is figuring out what the problem is
and trying to find a solution for that problem.
That's a typical sales skill as well.
You're not trying to sell a steak to avegetarian.

(39:34):
You have to make sure that vegetarian, you'reoffering a vegetarian opportunity to someone
who only eats veggies and same thing, you'rementioning a specific LP that would have had a
specific interest.
If you can repeatably offer that solution towhat that person is looking for, that type of
exposure, repeatably do that plus also providesome returns.

(39:56):
That's a win win and you can do something thatyour competitors won't do or can't do, which
gives you an edge.
Yeah, yeah, it's a great point.
And that's if you're coming from a finance or atechnical background, you should read sales
books.
Should try to read there's Miller Heimantraining is something that I went through,
which is sort of like the big sales trainingthing that everybody gets when they do inside

(40:19):
sales, which is more like cold calling emailingrather than field sales.
But I learned that really quickly on my firstcold call when my manager was monitoring me and
I was just listing off the features of productthat we're selling.
So I was selling organoids, which are actuallypretty awesome.
Everybody should look into organoids, butthey're basically many organs that you can grow
in a dish from a pluripotent stem cell.

(40:40):
But I was selling organoids and I was justlisting off the different features of this in
vitro model and how it's better than an animalmodel.
And obviously, I didn't make the sale.
But then the manager goes, you're not listingfeatures, you're not trying to sell the
product, you're trying to sell the relationshipbetween the product and the customer, you have
to understand what they're getting after.
Like you if you're talking to an operationsmanager, there's no point in selling on that on

(41:03):
the technical aspects of how a stem cell modelworks, you're selling on price.
So you have to think differently on what you'repitching based on the customer's motivations.
And that's something that seems intuitive, buthonestly, most people miss it.
Tell me more about sales.
So I'm really passionate about this too,because that's the lifeblood of any startup.
So what are some other nuggets, thinking aboutmaybe your best sales calls or maybe the worst

(41:26):
ones?
What are some of the other lessons that you'velearned?
Yeah, well, there's a big, I think a dichotomybetween like strategy and tactics.
So strategy is more high level.
How are you going to segment your market,approach different companies, etc, etc.
Tactics are the little nuggets you apply duringan actual call or during an email

(41:48):
correspondence or when you're out in the fielddoing a product demo.
So I think the tactics, one of the mostimportant tactics that's really important for
venture capitalists or for entrepreneurs isusing open ended questions.
So not asking really formulated questions thathave a yes or no answer, but asking questions

(42:08):
like, what are you hoping to do?
Where they're not they can't say yes or no,they have to outline the project for you.
And that's a pretty simple one.
But open ended questions can be hard to ask.
And if you ask the questions, they're going tolead you in the direction of the value
proposition.
So they do the formulation work for you.
If you just go through a list of yes or noquestions, you can think about it like a
fractal or like a decision tree, you're justgoing to lead down one route of the tree and

(42:32):
you're not going to make it very far.
Because if the last answer on that tree is no,then you're not going to sell the product,
you're not going to sell the idea.
But if you backtrack, you ask openingquestions, the entire decision tree is open as
your domain.
And they'll typically lead you down the branchthat you need to go in order to make the sale.
So I think that's a big one that I stillleverage is asking open ended questions.

(42:54):
Yeah, I agree, I think you have to reallylisten to what they're looking for because to
your point, if you have a script and you'rejust reading a bunch of stuff that they don't
care about, then it's, they're gonna probablystart, you're probably gonna start losing their
attention.
Any other ones, what like didn't work?
I guess too, I think there's probablydifferent, there's definitely different

(43:17):
approaches for price points, right?
So if you have like an enterprise type ofoffering, like something that's like a
healthcare Bloomberg type of term, Someanalytics thing, that's gonna be a longer life
cycle, right?
It's probably gonna take six months to possiblyclose that client because, and it might not
even be because there is an intent.
There's probably a lot of hierarchy at thatorganization as well.

(43:40):
I don't know if you've seen that.
So any other trends as far as the time to closethat you've seen for like B2B versus B2C versus
like just large institutional healthcare sales?
Like I don't know if you buy like psychedelicsin bulk, how can that vary versus like a B2B

(44:02):
SaaS platform?
Because I'm sure there's just a lot of crazycompliance considerations and then just
politics at organization for like approval ofthe budget and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, and that's what the big lesson isin sales is thinking about stakeholder
engagement how you can stratify the differentpeople within an organization.
And that's the one of the few valuable thingsthat I learned from my undergrad degree in

(44:27):
business was thinking about organizationalarchitecture.
Because sadly, like this is another challengefor scientifically oriented people is they
simply don't know how an organization runs.
They have no exposure to the differentfunctionalities.
They don't know how different people operatewithin these roles.
They just have the taglines finance,accounting, operations.
They don't really know what that entails.

(44:48):
So getting acquainted with that is reallyimportant in order to make a sale because
you're going to have to navigate thosedifferent people.
But yeah, so my sales experience was veryunique, but also awesome in an early career
stage because I was selling, I think myportfolio comprised the company was split down
the middle between immunology and regenerativemedicine cell therapy applications.

(45:12):
I was on the cell therapy side.
And I was selling over 1,000 products.
So I had this huge portfolio of extremelydifferentiated products that I was comparing to
Thermo Fisher and some of these other bigscientific suppliers.
But what was really important about that for meis I had to learn quickly, I had to learn
breadth.
And you're used to in science going for depth.

(45:34):
So you become an expert in one field, you pushfurther and further in that field, generate
more and more data, maybe at least to aninnovation, maybe it just leads to data and
findings or basic science or whatever.
But in scientific sales, have to broaden outbecause you're going be going after different
scientific segments on a daily, if not like anhourly or a minute by minute basis, you're
going be selling to somebody who works inneurology or works in oncology, who's looking

(45:56):
at cancer or psychiatric disorders.
So you get exposed to a ton of differentspaces.
So, not just functionalities, but alsoexpertise or segments within that market.
Do
you also get grilled by MedicalDoc?
Because I'm assuming the typical customers areprobably the distributors, I guess the people
that are actually buying it in bulk, but thosepeople probably have a really heavy medical

(46:22):
scientific background as well, right?
Mean, maybe walk me through a typical salesprocess in that sector where you're trying to
sell, you're selling these little mini organs.
How does that process go and how long does thattake?
Yeah, it's a really important point andeverybody, I think in any field will experience

(46:44):
imposter syndrome.
And like I said, I was selling alongside PhDs,I was selling two PhDs and PhD, some of the
most advanced degrees you could look up towithin science, and I was coming with just a
double bachelor's.
So you learn pretty quickly.
Well, you're definitely gonna meet a lot ofassholes, first of all.

(47:04):
So there's gonna be people who look down uponyou for a degree in any space.
If you don't have a Masters of Finance, youcan't do investment management and whatever the
hell.
What I learned quickly is that humility isalways the best choice.
So if you go in, you prepare intellectually forthe call, you know your product really well,
you know the company and their applicationreally well.
That's just one step.
The second step is going in and being humbleand asking open ended questions, not telling

(47:28):
the customer what they need because they're theexpert.
So that was really important.
I think that translated, like I said, to duediligence and deal sourcing is you have to be
humble about what you know and what you don'tknow.
And you have to leave the space open for thepeople to tell you what they know.
So yeah, I think humility was pretty importantthere.

(47:49):
And I think that happens when you don't have anadvanced degree and you're working with people
who do.
Yeah.
Well, we got a few more minutes.
Any other travel stories that you have?
Any other ones that you want to share with usthat maybe shaped your career?
Yeah, well, we talked about Brown a few times,I met Brown in Miami for the first Psychedelic

(48:10):
Investor Conference.
Yeah, Wonderland Miami conference, which ispretty insane.
Like I said, you meet charlatans, you meetsmart people, meet amazing, ethically oriented
impact investors.
But yeah, I shouldn't I would get sidetrackedif I just started talking about Miami because
it was one of it was another thing where I tooka risk I was I spent a little bit of money that
I didn't necessarily have just to go down thereand start meeting people and building

(48:34):
connections.
But I would say in terms of related to what wewere just talking about on humility,
credibility is a really important thing tothink about.
So credibility isn't an intrinsic feature ofyour character.
It has to do with the people you're relatingto.
Do you seem credible within a segment of thepopulation?
Do different people see you as credible becauseof your own experiences or because of your

(48:57):
intellect or whatever?
And like I said, intellect can only get you sofar or access to deals.
What I did is I looked at the spaces where Ihad credibility.
And I initially when we're forming ourinvestment thesis, I thought, maybe we'll play
around the blockchain space a little bit, maybewe'll look at crypto and how it can relate to
biopharma data.
Maybe we'll look at gene editing.

(49:17):
But those quickly, I realized those were not myspaces of expertise.
Have credibility in the neuroscience communitybecause of my degree and because of some of the
work I did at the NIH.
So we just decided to just focus on that.
Specialization, I think, in venture capital hasbecome increasingly important because it's so
saturated.
And I think you're going to see less and lessfirms like Andreessen Horowitz, who invest

(49:41):
across all different areas, because you need tohave some sort of differentiator to give you
arbitrage.
So yeah, so I thought about where I couldestablish credibility.
One of those is neuroscience.
I could start working within the neurosciencecommunity, building connections.
And then the other one was autism, which Imentioned, I have the familial connection.
So that's actually what I realized is, like me,there's hundreds I mean, I'm not a parent, but

(50:07):
there's millions of parents around the worldwho have an autistic child.
Just statistically, a lot of those people aregoing to be really wealthy.
And that means they're going to want to puttheir capital behind something that they feel
is impactful and they feel is ethical.
So I didn't realize that right away.
But then when I started to realize that there'sa community where I have credibility, I started
to dig in and meet the right people.

(50:27):
So I guess the lesson there is just find outwhere your credibility lies.
And usually it's not going to lie in how smartyou are, because there's lots of smart people,
but it's going to lie in the experience youhave within different communities and your
specific intellectual capacities, which in mycase was neuroscience and psychology.
That's just something.
Yeah, A big thing too is the cultures arecompletely different.

(50:50):
Talking to a couple other buddies, mean theculture is completely different.
The psychedelic community, specifically in NewYork versus Miami is just night and day, right?
So it's much more healthcare oriented, it'smuch more institutional as far as like, if you
go to conferences and stuff, it's just adifferent vibe in Miami, right?

(51:11):
I mean, it's probably less crypto people whenyou go to these conferences in New York.
So definitely like understanding the audienceand reading the room is really big too.
So yeah, looks like we got a couple ofquestions.
Have you got a couple of minutes here?
Anu, it looks like you had a question.
Thanks, Joel.

(51:32):
Yes, Mark, just amazing to hear you today.
You know, the depth of maturity and, you know,how you pulled your experiences together.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
My background, you know I have worked.
In tech and consulting and I and a specialinterest, of course, are companies that are

(51:53):
disruptive so future tech fintech are some ofthe areas I really enjoy.
So it was great to hear about, know,psychedelics and the neuro space.
My question is, what are some of the companiesin your portfolio?
And can you share, because you're such a goodstoryteller, which of these is your, you know,
personal favorite or your favorite investment?

(52:14):
And can you share that story behind that?
Yeah, well, I can tell you one thing is thatI've only been investing for a year.
So my portfolio is pretty limited.
But the other thing I'll tell you is that thedeal I'm working to working on right now is my
favorite deal.
And it's also the one deal I cannot talk about.
But it's my first foray outside investingoutside of psychedelics.

(52:38):
So like I mentioned, I think drug devicecombinations.
So how can you think about convergence pointsbetween different industries and platforms that
won't necessarily produce one drug, but thatevery single drug within an industry can
produce?
And that's a good way to think about it.
So where is there going to be a lot of valuethat's more abstracted from a single company?

(52:59):
And I really like the idea of drug delivery,because every single psychedelic compound needs
to be delivered in some fashion.
So there's patches, there's oral delivery,there's intravenous.
So is there a company out there that'sinnovating on drug delivery that are producing
devices that they can out license to everysingle company that's producing a psychedelic
drug?
So there's a few companies that I really likein my portfolio that do that.

(53:22):
But like I said, the deal I'm working on rightnow is a drug device company, combo company
that is developing.
I'm trying to figure out how far I can go inwithout revealing any proprietary, but they
have a huge patent portfolio, massive IPdefensibility.
They are already generating revenue, which ispretty rare for a medical technology company
because they're leveraging a clinical model.

(53:46):
And they have a pretty clear path to market interms of regulation.
They're already in phase three for oneindication, and they have a pipeline of
different drug device combinations below thatthat are looking at other indications.
So I think I really like the companies thathave a platform for development, not just a
single idea, but a platform that they canleverage to look at other models.
And sorry, I can't dig into this single companythat I'm looking at right now, but it's one of

(54:10):
my first deals and I'm holding it pretty tightto the chest.
Awesome.
Thank you for sharing.
No, this was great.
And I'd love to connect, but this is wonderful.
Thanks for sharing.
Thank you.
That's great.
So we had another question from Manbir.
Do you plan on growing your internal team downthe road?
I guess another thing is like, what do you lookfor when you, eventually when you grow your

(54:32):
team, What would you look for in an analyst oran associate?
Yeah, good question.
So right now we're invested in as LPs and abunch of funds.
We have a few direct investments in differentmed tech and psychedelic companies.
My aim is to syndicate a few more deals andbuild a track record and then hopefully start a

(54:52):
close end fund with a more traditional fundwith an emphasis on the things that I know
well, like neurodevelopment and autism.
So in terms of what I'm looking for, and I'mactually actively trying to find a co founder
right now, because my dad is my partner, buthe's also retired, and he doesn't necessarily
want to dig into all the work here.

(55:13):
But I'm looking for a co founder whocomplements me by being almost the direct
opposite of me.
So I want somebody I'm on the West, I'm on theEast Coast, I work in the biotech community.
I know people really well over here.
But I don't have a strong financial forecastingbackground or private equity background.
So I'm looking somebody who can touch on thescientific aspects, but who has a lot of the

(55:36):
compliments that I don't have.
So a network on the West Coast or the Midwestand South for fundraising.
Somebody who has some technical knowledge inscience, but is way better at building
spreadsheets and building financial forecastsfor these companies.
Maybe somebody who has more of a depth andintellectual property practice.
So it's not just about having everything.
It's about having one thing and thinking onceagain, thinking about the other party.

(56:00):
So for me, I'm more scientifically oriented.
So how could you complement me by being theopposite of me?
So yeah, I think that's the way I'm thinkingabout it when I'm looking for my co founder.
I don't think if we'll be in the next twoyears, I doubt we'll be in a place to be hiring
associates or analysts, but I'm looking for aco founder for now.
Yeah, that's great.
And, know, I did not actually know that youwere an active LP as well.

(56:22):
So I got to talk to you offline and plug youinto the fund accelerator in one of the
sessions.
But what's your advice for people that want tobe an LP?
And what have you looked at in funds?
Because I don't think there's enough contentout there that really unpack that.
So and I know we're out of time, but maybe realquick qualitative and quantitative of like what

(56:44):
you look at for funds and and what are someways for people that you would advise for them
to dip their toes into being an LP?
Yeah, good question.
Yeah.
And I rely heavily on qualitative aspects offunds because like I said, there's not going to
be a lot of quantitative figures to rely on inbiotech or pre commercial companies.
Yeah.
But for the funds, it's a breadth of knowledge.

(57:08):
So, I like companies that have somebody who hasa really strong technical background, but is,
like I said, complemented by another person whohas a private equity background.
And that's something I found in droves inbiotech, especially.
I hope to see that a little bit more inpsychedelic spaces, because right now the
psychedelic community is comprised a lot bypeople with their personal experiences, but not

(57:29):
a strong acquaintance with, I guess, theunderlying science.
And I think that that leads to a lot ofmisconceptions that will be corrected over the
next few years.
Sorry, I think I lost track of the question.
But yeah, I look heavily at qualitativeaspects.
These people have a strong grasp of what aregulatory pathway looks like?
Do they understand how intellectual propertyworks in the pharmaceutical space?

(57:53):
And are they able to read a paper?
That's the really basic one.
Most people don't read scientific papers.
And I think that leads to a lot ofmisconceptions as well.
If you can't read just basic data, basic tableson the efficacy of a drug or the safety of a
drug, I think perhaps it's not the segment thatyou want to pursue.
Yeah, that's really helpful.

(58:14):
Well, I know we're at time, Mark.
This is awesome.
I'll circle back with you because I want to,you know, hopefully catch up with you at some
point and go much, much deeper on psychedelics.
Thanks for the time.
I know you're super busy.
So really appreciate you coming out and doingsome community building with me.
Yeah, thanks a lot.
I'm really happy to be here.
And I would say yeah, check out Hectorventures.
I hope you follow us on LinkedIn.

(58:35):
But we're also general partners with TabulaRasa ventures, which is a New York based
psychedelic accelerator,
the first
of its kind.
So I would say if you're looking for a job inNew York, maybe get in touch with Tabula Ross.
I know they're going to be hiring some peopleto support due diligence.
That's great.
Yeah, I think accelerators are great becauseyou really have access to all of the VCs that

(58:55):
come in, so you build networking there, butthen you're also supporting the company.
So you're really building that tactical skillset and really building those skills.
So I will circle back with you on that as well.
When is there how often do they do demo days?
When's the next demo day?
I don't think they've done a demo day yetbecause they're still on raising mode.

(59:16):
They're pretty cool.
But yeah, they're all.
Yeah.
So I just have to work
on working on getting things set up andhopefully having their first class.
I'm assuming exactly.
Yep.
Okay.
Well, excited to hear that.
Mean, it's it's really cool to just be pluggedin with like the experts in the space because
it's a new space, right?
So it's pretty early and exciting to getinvolved because psychedelics was not where it

(59:40):
was just a few years ago.
I think based on what Brahm was saying, themarket size has just exponentially increased.
So thanks for all the work that you guys aredoing to kind of be a catalyst for this.
Thanks.
Yeah.
I would say just get out there and look forconnections.
Personal networking is you're not gonna make iton your own.
So yeah, yeah.