New $25M VC Fund Looking At Psychedelics And Neurotechnology To Tackle Global Mental Health Crisis

A new $25 million venture fund is going all-in on psychedelic medicine.

PsyMed is an entrepreneur-led VC fund with a focus on psychedelic medicine, precision psychiatry and neurotechnology. The fund’s goal is to support innovative solutions to solve today’s ongoing mental health crisis.

“We need more investment to meet the demand of our modern-day mental health crisis and we have been creating a network of investors because we will get more done together, faster,” said co-founder Greg Kubin.

From A Syndicate To A Full-Fledged VC Fund

In 2020, founders Matias Serebrinsky, Greg Kubin and Dina Burkitbayeva began building a syndicate of partners called PsyMed Ventures that has so far invested $15.6 million in 14 companies. The syndicate, which now groups 300 investors, eventually mutated into PsyMed, an early-stage fund that invests in companies at the pre-seed, seed, and series A rounds.

“The idea of venture capital is to put capital and resources to work on problems that are really hard to solve and that no one else is willing to fund, which can bring a positive change to humanity,” Serebrinsky told Benzinga.

The co-founder explained that the group waited until it had gathered about a third of its assets before beginning to deploy its capital into the mental health space.

“As an investor, you see opportunities pass by in front of you and it’s not good to miss out on them. Also, it’s more appealing to potential new investors to join a fund that already has some investments in the space,” Serebrinsky said.

While the fund places a strong emphasis on the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, it also invests in other innovative areas of the biotech space. Serebrinsky said that diving into the psychedelics startup rabbit hole opened the group’s eyes to the immense opportunity available in adjacent markets like precision psychiatry and neurotechnology. 

“Psychedelics aren’t the only available solution. They won’t be able to help every single person in the world in their healing process. So with that in mind, other opportunities are also worth exploring. We’re looking to expand beyond a type of fanaticism that’s pervasive in the psychedelics space.”

An Entrepreneur-Led VC Fund

“Something interesting about our fund is that Greg, Dina and I, we all have an entrepreneurial past, we all started venture-backed companies in the past and raised venture money, so we have a different background than usual players in the space,” Serebrinsky added.

“Matias, Greg, and Dina are generous with their time, have opened their network, are not afraid to have hard conversations, and tactfully plant the seeds of the questions we need to think about ahead of time,” said Myriam Barthes, COO and co-founder of Journey Clinical, one of the companies that PsyMed has invested in.

PsyMed is also an early investor in Delix Therapeutics, a company developing psychedelics-derived molecules with the potential of offering some of the therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs without causing a hallucinogenic effect.

The fund has also accompanied the incubation of Freedom Biosciences, a clinical-stage technology transfer company, which sprouted off the work of Dr. John Krystal, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale and chief of psychiatry at the Yale-New Haven Hospital.

PsyMed donates 4.19% of its profits to indigenous communities and psychedelic medicine nonprofits.

Photo by Fakurian Design on Unsplash.