Mushrooms in Chocolate: How MyCAO Built a Functional CPG Brand

Meet Colin Christensen, the entrepreneur who turned "mushrooms and chocolate" into a fast-growing Canadian functional food brand — and made it taste like chocolate, not sand.

MyCAO (a mashup of mycelia + cacao) started almost by accident. Hired as CEO of a psilocybin company waiting on regulation, Colin needed a revenue stream and stumbled into the functional mushroom space. A conversation with a high-end Edmonton chocolatier flipped his original "Canadian MUD/WTR" idea on its head — and four months later, MyCAO was making revenue.

In this episode, Colin walks Phil and Kenny through the real formulation challenge behind the brand: getting a full, effective gram of a single mushroom species into every button without the gritty, sandy texture that plagues most mushroom products. The team leaned on renowned herbalist Robert Rogers, sourced full-spectrum mushrooms from a GMP-grade Canadian grower, and paired everything with Valrhona dark chocolate. The result is a functional dose you'd actually want to eat.

It's a sharp look at building a differentiated CPG brand in a crowded wellness category — where dose, quality, and format are the whole game.

Find Colin Christensen (CEO) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinchristensen/
MyCAO: https://mycao.ca/