This week’s Psychedelic Groundbreaker is Psylo. Psylo is a pre-clinical biotech company designing new therapeutics to treat mental illness. By developing novel molecules inspired by psychedelic chemotypes they aim to discover next-generation medicines which iterate on what exists in nature. Psylo’s first initiative is to produce a shorter-acting psilocybin derivative to expand the therapeutic application of psychedelic medicine.
Psylo just recently completed the StartMate accelerator, and their launch was covered in the Australian Financial Review and StartupDaily.
What’s this article series about? Psychedelic Groundbreakers is a get-to-know-you-style blog series highlighting prominent and groundbreaking companies in the psychedelics industry.
What’s your company vision?
1 in 8 Australians take antidepressants, but fewer than 10% of those patients see a tangible benefit. Psylo is Australia’s first psychedelic biotech start-up. We count ourselves among a small but growing international cohort of companies building a pipeline of psychedelic-inspired mental illness medications based on psychedelic chemotypes. Our vision is to take a traditional biotech approach in developing these drugs and progressing them to the clinic.
Why was your company started?
After many years of stagnation, Australian biotech is emerging. We have an incredibly hospitable climate for developing IP in this country, with top-tier academic institutions and one of the more generous R&D tax credit programs in the world. We’ve wanted to launch a company in this space for a while, and given recent cultural and governmental shifts with respect to psychedelics, we felt the timing was right to act.
We were lucky enough to be accepted and graduate from the StartMate accelerator program, which is the AUNZ equivalent of Y-Combinator – so people think of us as the Gilgamesh of Asia Pacific. That definitely made fundraising a lot easier.
What’s been the biggest challenge so far?
Recruiting has been challenging due to COVID19, but now that Australia is opening back up we’re excited to recruit some of the best psychedelic science professionals in the world to come to Sydney to join us.
We’re hiring a Lead Medicinal Chemist, please take a look at the job posting
.
What excites you most?
We’ve been excited to track all of the late-stage clinical trials showing the enormous benefits of psychedelics to patients suffering from depression and cancer-related anxiety. Perhaps even more exciting are the emerging applications for these medicines in areas of huge unmet need; eating disorders, addiction, cluster headaches, and many others.
One example is the work of Peter Hendricks at the University of Alabama, and the clinical trials he’s run with respect to psychedelic-assisted therapy for treating cocaine addiction. This trial is targeting a mostly minority homeless population, who have been addicted to cocaine or crack for the majority of their adult lives. Amidst all the excitement about psychedelics, it is this type of practical application with real-world implications for those most in need that excites us.
What is your biggest lesson learned when raising capital?
The biggest lesson for raising a preseed round is to be decisive. At the start, we were uncertain about what we were looking for and had a mixed response – as soon as we refined our messaging and established the terms and timeline everything fell into place very quickly.
Did you notice any type of investor differences while raising money?
Yes, definitely. I’d put the investors in this space into a few buckets:
1. Tech and deep-tech “generalist” VCs interested in biotech
2. Psychedelic and cannabis specialist VCs who know the space very well
3. DBL funds and angels who are broadly supportive of psychedelics
4. Traditional biotech investors who are generally a later stage
In our preseed round, we were lucky enough to have 1/3 VC, 1/3 angels, and 1/3 strategic investors.
Describe your business model in 10 words or less
Psylo is developing psychedelic-inspired medications to treat mental illness.
What tips would you give founders entering fundraising?
There is plenty of funding out there if you have the right team and a unique approach; do your homework, and be decisive on what you are asking for and what you are planning to achieve.
We’d like to thank Psylo for being a part of the Psychedelic Groundbreaker series. Stay tuned for more profiles on leaders in the psychedelic industry, and click here to learn more about Psylo.
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