Through startup incubation and acceleration we are Transforming the landscape for mental health treatments using legal psychedelics. Join us.
Psychedelics aren't just a single drug. This class of compounds is extremely varied in chemical structure as well as mental, physical, and physiological effects when ingested. The effects of each molecule vary immensely based on dosage, and particularly with changes to set and setting: the mindset and environment under which a patient or user ingests the substance.
While some compounds are organic, arriving from naturally grown plants and fungi, others are completely synthetic. The vast array of psychedelic compounds means each one has its own supply chain, consumer demographic, and ailment that it is capable of treating.
Policy is changing all across the world and city by city within the United States. While most shifts will only see the opportunity for psychedelic healing appear in the next few years, the time to build is now.
Unlike Cannabis, Psychedelics have a pathway to federal legalizations through the FDA approval process. Additionally, the use of psychedelics for therapeutic treatment in supervised settings is a regulatory opening that wasn't available for Cannabis. As initiatives such as the one in Oregon continue to pass across the country the rollout of these medicines is likely to increase in speed, but only if serious problems are avoided.
Without proper screening there will be a significant increase in the amount of individuals who slip into Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder as a result of interacting with psychedelic medicines. This paired with the immense anecdotal evidence of individuals consuming psychedelics in unsupervised settings resulting in fatalities from researchers as prominent as Rick Strassman must be paid attention to in the development of this rollout.
Unlike Cannabis, many Psychedelic compounds are being taken through the FDA approval process and are then being de-scheduled in turn. The pairing of compound and ailment for regulatory approval has opened up immense opportunity on the drug development side of the psychedelic industry. But there is much more to prepare for a healthy rollout.
The efficacy of psychedelics is determined by not only the compound but by the set and setting, the mindset and environment in which an individual received treatment. That means processes for preparation, integration, facilitation, and reassociation all need to be created in tandem with the approval of these medicines.
Clinic systems, technology companies, cultivation facilities, and media & education entities all need to be developed simultaneously to prepare for the shifts that will occur over the next 2 years of time.
Our work does not focus as heavily on drug development as many other organizations in the space. Many psychedelic companies taking the drug development approach are overvalued, unprepared, and unaware of the complexities of psychedelic healing.
We are focused on high-impact opportunities that can generate significant financial return, but are also going above and beyond when it comes to prioritizing patients and making a difference. We work with entrepreneurs who are early stage, have less than a 6M valuation, and are looking to prioritize impact in their work. We are subsector agnostic working with companies in drug development, technology, media, cultivation, clinic systems, consciousness research, and so on.
If you're interested in our programs you can check out the companies we've worked with and chat with us to see if its a fit.
Our startup school works with companies that are in their beginning stages. We help founders set up the foundations necessary to have a successful launch pad for their work while providing support through a structured curriculum that teaches entrepreneurs everything from the basics of landing page design to financial modeling.
Our staff works as an in house team to support you along the way and our vast advisor network is there to help you get over the tricky hurdles you'll face in your beginning stages. Each participant in the program receives $30K in development hours from the top entrepreneurs, designers, investors, healers, and activists within the psychedelic ecosystem.
Ready to join us? Read more at the link below and fill out our short application for the next cohort.
What Tabula Rasa has built is truly remarkable. I show up to the program every day knowing that I will be supported and introduced to the top leaders in the psychedelic ecosystem and grow my organization strategically every step of the way.
Veronica Castillo
Our accelerator program works with early-stage startups that have achieved product-market fit and are ready to scale. Over three months of time we help entrepreneurs take the leap to their next stage and get prepared to either raise capital or grow their business rapidly.
Our internal staff works closely with you every step of the way to help improve sales and product, solidify new partnerships, and connect you with the people necessary to help you bring your business to the next level. Office hours with our network of mentors and advisors allow for you to build infrastructure for the future and see the problems before it's too late.
i joined as a director with tabula rasa because i'm from the world of accelerators and this is the only team with the history, knowledge, insights, and deal flow to build the future of the ecosystem.
judy blumstock - diamond therapeutics, tiap
Our Fund is the financial backbone of our incubator and accelerator programs. We don't invest into external companies to reduce conflicts of interest and focus solely on companies that are part of our programs. Since the companies we work with are early stage we provide them with not only the capital, but the guidance necessary to get to the next phase in their development. We also de-risk at every stage by allocating 1/3rd of our capital for smaller check sizes in our companies' seed rounds and then reserving 2/3rds to invest in Series A and Series B.
With 25 startups per year we are on track to make all of our initial investments by the end of 2023 and help our companies grow in the years to come.
WE're investing in tabula rasa because they're simply one of the strongest teams we've come across. they are more than capable of building the best accelerator in the psychedelics space and are positioned to go far beyond when it comes to both impact and financial return.
SIMEON SCHNAPPER - JLS
How do our startups get capitalized? We make sure to bring in values aligned investors from all over the ecosystem to help startups oversubscribe their rounds and have the top choice of who they work with.
A portion of the carry from every investment is allocated to businesses founded by underrepresented entrepreneurs.
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Marik is an engineer, advocate, entrepreneur, and investor who has worked across “counter culture” industries. He founded the first incubator focused on psychedelic startups and runs the world’s largest psychedelics conference, Psyched. He is the founding partner of Tabula Rasa Ventures, the premiere accelerator fund for early stage psychedelic companies and is the CEO of Energia Holdings Inc., an organization building the future of health by turning healthcare’s blindspots into preventative care solutions.
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Maya is an operations/project managment specialist and writer who has experience in several industries. Before diving into the psychedelic space, she spent many years at the top of the coffee industry, her work earning her print coverage in publications such as Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Recently, Maya was first author of a 200+ page compressive report on the psychedelic space, covering history, policy, science, and investment landscape. She is now co-authoring a book on the subject. She leads the organization of a yearly psychedelic conference, and helps several other other organizations through her operations consulting.
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Maria is a seasoned biopharma strategy consultant with a passion for entrepreneurship. She has 5+ years of professional experience developing and implementing global strategy projects for top pharma companies, spanning across R&D, clinical trial design, product launch, regulatory affairs, business intelligence, sales, operations and M&A. Maria has worked with top biopharma companies like AstraZeneca, Roche, UCB and more for over 5 years, developing and helping execute global strategy, mainly in the space of neurology, oncology, and immunology. Maria holds a BSc Pharmacology degree from University of Leeds, UK and MPhil Bioscience Enterprise degree from University of Cambridge, UK.
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Tahira is a Partner at Highlands Venture Partners and CEO of Commons, as well as a member of the board of directors for Akerna Corp., Ceres Acquisition Corp., and Superette. From brand building to hedge funds, Tahira has previously held positions at Marley Natural, Privateer Holdings, City First Enterprises, Perry Capital, and Ernst & Young.
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Ms. Blumstock brings over 25 years of experience in the life science sector, spanning from early to late stage investments. She is currently Executive Director, Corporate Development at TIAP, an early stage academic incubator in Toronto. In prior roles, Judith was a principal with Genesys Capital Partners, one of the largest Canadian venture firms focused on the life sciences industry. She was was a partner with Royal Bank Capital Partners Life Sciences Fund and Director of Bio/pharmaceutical Research at Drug Royalty Corporation (now DRI Capital). Judith received an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School and BSc in Biology from the University of Toronto.
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Adolf Akuffo-Afful also known as "Addie" is an aspiring ecosystem builder here in Upstate NY. In his professional career he has worked in the venture capital space first starting at Partech Partners in their Senegalese subsidiary and now jumping into the equity crowdfunding space with Wefunder, an American based Equity Crowdfunding platform. He holds an Entrepreneur In Residence position at the Urban League of Rochester in partnership with Jumpstarts and KeyBank. As well as sits on the board for a few Upstate NY startups and businesses. On the more personal spectrum he has made it his mission to establish programs that benefit individuals who define themselves as a minority or women in business. The first being ROC The Room, which was established in late 2019 as a platform for local underrepresented creatives to pitch their ideas to a room full of their community members and get feedback, resources and of course bragging rights once they win, and is now on its 4th event. There are some exciting things brewing in the Upstate NY ecosystem and Addie wants to bring inclusivity to the forefront of those initiatives.
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Tanya Harding’s academic focus started out in agricultural biotechnology, for which she obtained a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of California at Davis. She took her knowledge of molecular biology and genetics with her to Cornell Law School, graduating into a career in patent law. Tanya has practiced more than 20 years as a patent lawyer in Portland, Oregon, helping research institutions, government agencies, corporations, and individuals protect domestic and international intellectual property rights in diverse Life Science, Agriculture, and Medical technologies. Tanya is passionate about shifting food production systems everywhere to be more regional, regenerative, and environmentally sound. Tanya lives near Portland, Oregon.
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Robert W.E. Laurie, an international lawyer, founded AD LUCEM LAW CORPORATION in Vancouver in 2013 and his legal practice focuses on commercial business, government regulatory and constitutional issues surrounding cannabis and psychedelic plant medicines. Robert serves as a Board Advisor to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Canada, Steve DeAngelo’s Last Prisoner Project, SPORE Denver and a Legal Advisor to the Heroic Hearts Project UK. Robert is one of the Founding Partners with Dr. Dennis McKenna of the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy. He serves as a Director with Jay DeMerit and Ashleigh McIvor’s Rise and Shine Foundation and Rex Weyler’s Ecuador Amazon Restoration Project. Robert holds an M.A. from the University of Oxford (St. Edmund Hall) and B.A. (Hons) in Political Science and International Relations from the University of British Columbia.
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John served as a corporate attorney in Silicon Valley for nearly 20 years before transitioning in 2015 to focus exclusively on psychedelics. He founded Trippingly.net in 2017 and has been an outspoken advocate for the decrim movement. He is the senior advisor to MIMOSA Therapeutics, co-founded by Amanda Fielding and also advises other prominent companies in the space. Prior to his legal career at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and Latham & Watkins, John clerked on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Delaware Supreme Court.
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Prior to co-founding BDS Analytics, Liz Stahura spent her career in the market research space, working for some of the leading names in retail sales tracking, consumer insights and data analytics including Leisure Trends and NPD Group. During her tenure, Stahura led analytics, sales, and client services teams, and assisted through NPD’s acquisition of Leisure Trends in 2013. She then took on strategic growth and development for Camber Outdoors, a well-known non-profit organization supporting inclusion, equity and leadership development in the active outdoor industry. Identifying the opportunity in a then-nascent industry, Stahura co-founded BDS Analytics in 2015 with Roy Bingham. They have since grown the company into the most cited data and analytics provider for the cannabis industry. Stahura is a frequent presenter and well-regarded cannabinoid industry expert. Her work can be seen, heard and read through the numerous industry presentations, webinars, articles, white papers and trend pieces she has delivered over the years. Stahura is from Columbus, Ohio, and is an alumna of University of Colorado Boulder.
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Prav Pillay MBA/MFA-Founding Partner and Managing Director, Humanitas Capital | Humanitas Smart Planet Fund. Based on his seminal experience on the team that established Doctors without Borders in Canada, as an executive, senior manager and independent strategic advisor, Prav has worked with leaders to effect transformative change within their organizations, themselves and the world. Applying a systems lens and a unique professional development approach connecting individuals to their inner wisdom and teams to their collective awareness, he enables organizations to engage in new ways with proven strategic planning, business modelling. project management and public and stakeholder engagement practices to achieve superior performance results. Prior to taking up his role with Humanitas, Prav was an Executive-in-Residence with VIATEC, a leading technology venture accelerator, where he brought his expertise and experience to facilitate the development of innovative start-ups seeking to make a difference in the world. Considered an expert communicator, being incredibly curious about the world and holding academic credentials including an MBA , MFA and a permaculture certification, Prav has given key-note talks on a range of subjects and appeared on expert panels across several disciplines at universities, conferences and private educational institutions including Esalen in California and Hollyhock in British Columbia.Prav is an advisor to Do Yoga With Me, Art Finds Me, DreamRider Productions and Energia~Tabula Rasa Ventures; a member of the Silicon Valley Blockchain Society; and serves on the board of Dignitas International.
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Simeon is a life-long student of Psychedelics and has a keen awareness of the cultural regulatory and the nascent venture landscape of the mushrooming industry. He has traveled the globe participating in psychedelic conferences to living with indigenous communities. He co-founded the High Art Collective in 2008 the world’s first Psychedelic Art Gallery and MMJ Dispensary praised as a paradigm shift at the very beginning of the end of prohibition. Simeon advises several psychedelic startups, is a founding partner at JLS a plant medicine fund, is an Aspen Institute Fellow and a member of NYMS (New York Mycology Society).
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Magenta is an organizational development consultant specializing in regenerative business and equitable leadership. She directs Bloom Network, a global incubator for bioregional solutions to climate change and societal well-being. She advocates for decriminalization of psychedelics and respect for the autonomy of Indigenous medicine practices.
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Olav Sorenson joined the UCLA Anderson faculty in 2020. His primary stream of research pertains to economic geography, focusing on how entrepreneurship influences the growth and competitiveness of regions within countries, and on why some regions appear more supportive to entrepreneurs than others. “I was in graduate school in the mid-1990s at Stanford, in Silicon Valley, and it seemed like everybody and their brother was getting involved in a startup,” Sorenson says. “That’s really what got me interested in entrepreneurship and interested in ‘Why Silicon Valley?’ What was different about Silicon Valley than other places?” He has called attention to unexpected consequences of the fact that social capital plays an important role in entrepreneurial success. Largely in recognition of this research, Sorenson received the 2018 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. His secondary streams of research have addressed the relationships between basic science and innovation and how organizations can better learn from their interactions with customers and from their manufacturing experience. In total, he has delivered nearly 400 research presentations and has had more than 90 papers published on these subjects, in journals such as Science, the American Journal of Sociology, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Administrative Science Quarterly, Strategic Management Journal and Research Policy. Sorenson serves as a department editor for Management Science and as a deputy editor at the American Sociological Review. He has also served in editorial positions at more than a dozen other journals. Sorenson’s Venture Capital Strategy course is a version of one he’s taught since 2005. “My goal with that course is to do something that’s a little different from the typical venture capital course, which is usually about valuation and contract terms,” says Sorenson. “This course comes more from the perspective of someone who would be an active venture capital or angel investor, and some of the types of strategic decisions that are involved with that.” He’ll also be teaching Entrepreneurship and Venture Initiation, an introductory entrepreneurship course. In addition to his research and teaching responsibilities, Sorenson joins the Harold and Pauline Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation as faculty research director. In that role, he plans to build on the curricular offerings of the Price Center and create a research arm dedicated to entrepreneurial studies. Sorenson also plans to mentor student entrepreneurial teams within the Anderson Venture Accelerator and those participating in the school’s Business Creation Option field study. From 1999 to 2005, Sorenson taught strategy courses at UCLA Anderson. Prior to returning to Anderson, he held the Frederick Frank ’54 and Mary C. Tanner Professorship at the Yale School of Management and, before that, the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto. He has also served on the faculties of London Business School and the University of Chicago, and has held visiting appointments at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, SDA Bocconi, Universidad Carlos III, Melbourne Business School, Singapore Management University, the National University of Singapore, BI Norwegian Business School, the Stanford Graduate School of Business and INSEAD. Sorenson received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. He has also received an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University.
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For nearly 30 years, Tammy’s life and work have been an active commitment to self-awareness, healing and growth. Professionally, she is a seasoned strategist, advisor, facilitator and coach with an MA Anthropology of Media from the University of London, an MBA from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and a PhD in Education and Technology from Florida International University. Tammy’s evolutionary career in media, tech, management, and professional development includes guiding the behavioral growth of leaders at all stages in their careers, from a variety of cultural backgrounds, and across a wide range of industries. Personally, her emotional, mental and spiritual growth has leveraged 12-step, cognitive and somatic therapies, and entheogenic experiences to move beyond addiction, depression, complex PTSD and transgenerational trauma. With expertise grounded in experience and research, Tammy remains committed to holistic and accessible mental wellness in service of a stable and just world. Where there are initiatives, efforts and people who share this commitment, she’s keen to connect and is best reached via www.linkedin.com/in/tammyssanders.
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Carmen Winter is a Washington D.C. based design strategist. She has a Masters in UX Design from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). In 2012 she received a B.A. in History from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Carmen is currently the Development Associate at Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) and a Product Developer at Fraqtal. She is a creator and problem-solver with expertise in research, drug policy analysis, equity and impact analysis, non-profit development, consumer packaged goods and graphic design.
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Ashley is an experienced neuroscience researcher and entrepreneur spending the last 5 years working on developing therapies for rare diseases. Most recently she has been leading and managing multiple teams in the development of cell-based therapies for Huntington’s disease. Her work at the University of Rochester Medical Center contributed to pre-Investigational New Drug studies at Oscine Therapeutics which was then acquired by Sana biotechnology. She continues her work with Sana focusing specifically on glial cell therapy. Ashley has a passion for science, social equality, and sustainability. She studied business administration at the University of Rochester focusing on finance and entrepreneurship. She has also developed systems to improve sustainability in growing cities focusing specifically on recycling processes and the gamification of daily “green actions”. Ashley holds an MBA from the Simon school of Business and a Bachelors from Cornell University.
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Alex Zhao is a cofounder of the Penn Society for Psychedelic Science (PSPS) and the Intercollegiate Psychedelics Network (IPN), and is currently a Mycelium member (Board of Directors) of IPN. In addition to his roles at PSPS and IPN, Alex recently joined the tech committee of MAPS Canada, and has previously worked with the Qualia Research Institute (QRI) on mathematically formalizing the study of consciousness. Alex is fascinated by neuroscience, physics, philosophy, information theory and above all the profound interconnectedness of everything. In particular, he is fascinated by non-ordinary states of consciousness, Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle, and Dani Bassett’s recent work on energy landscapes. He hopes that through his work, he can contribute to the alleviation of involuntary suffering and co-create a more connected and blissful future. Alex holds a BAS and a BS in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Computer Science at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Statistics and Business at The Wharton School.
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She’s a Dreamer. A Doer. A Thinker. She sees possibility everywhere. Ideas maker and Immersive content creator thriving in all creative - from a cross-platform dance performance project at The Royal Opera House to virtual fashion show at RYOT. Her mission is to tell stories that matter. Completed MA in Digital Media & Screen documentary at Goldsmiths University of London. Factual Development and Production graduate from National Film & Television School. Her work was screened and nominated to number of UK and international Film Festivals, including BFI and BAFTA.
READ MOREIf you're looking to find out more about our work or want to contribute to our cause then please reach out to marik@tabularasa.ventures. Building a community around this movement is the only way we'll be able to destigmatize these medicines and create a wider variety of opportunities for struggling individuals to address their mental health. Thank you.
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