 to invest in psychedelics or have invested in psychedelics? This is not the same. We are looking at a completely different model. And the two gentlemen that are sitting with me now are going to take a moment to explain what their business models are. We're going to get into that. But we are in the third wave of the psychedelic industry. And for those of you who have not read Michael Pollan's book, How to Change Your Mind, I don't know what the hell you're doing in this room. And if you have read the book, you will understand that there has been a tremendous amount of real clinical research around psilocybin and LSD. And as we've heard, Ebola and ibogaine and other molecules. What happened, as you all know, in the 1960s is those molecules escaped the clinic and escaped the lab and ran into general public. And there was a massive backlash by the federal government led by Richard Nixon. And it really killed this movement. And most importantly, the research and the clinical work on this up until 1995, when Dr. Woodstrasman at the University of New Mexico started to do work on DMT. So we'll talk a little bit about that and how to communicate and how not to scare off the straits in a bit. But first I'd like to introduce one of the lovely from FieldTrip. We're going to take a moment and explain who you are and why you're here and what FieldTrip is. Sure, hey, I'm Ronan. I'm one of the co-founders and executive chairman of FieldTrip. The co-founders of FieldTrip all came out of the DNA and cannabis industry. We were instrumental in really building a clinical infrastructure that took cannabis from being something that was seen as quasi-medical, something that I think a lot of physicians and patients now see as truly medical and therapeutic. We built a business-qualityed cannabis clinics in CannabisRx. We sold that to Aurora Cannabis back in 2016. I suspect a lot of investors here are also cannabis investors. You probably know the story of Aurora, which skyrocketed from a very small company, shortly before the acquisition. So one of the largest medical cannabis companies in the world. We left a couple of years ago and that's when we came across Psychedelics as an opportunity. And immediately, like most people who saw a lot of parallels or thought there were a lot of parallels between cannabis and Psychedelics, we go into research, one of our first conversations was with George from Compass, which was a very constructive conversation. We quickly came to the hypothesis that you're gonna see legal access to Psychedelics in some form or another, probably much sooner than most would expect. And so we set about trying to figure out how to build a business model. And anticipating that while these molecules are still scheduled and while companies like Compass or nonprofits like Maps were two, three, four, five years ahead of us in sort of a conventional drug development pathway. And so where we landed was we don't know exactly what the future of Psychedelics looks like. We don't know the legal path that's gonna get across the line first. But there's infrastructure that we started building now. Today that is going to be essential for whatever that industry looks like in the future. And so with FieldTrip, our core focus right now is building a large-scale network of psychedelic-focused medical clinics. Our first three clinics will be open early this year, starting in Toronto, New York, and LA, starting with ketamine and hand psychotherapy, and then we'll scale it beyond that. At the same time, we're making strategic investments in the R&D for areas where we see a lot of potential. One is drawing a parallel to cannabis is that psychedelic mushrooms have not been studied in depth. There's over 200 species of psilocybin-producing mushrooms and other plant-based psychedelics. So we're investing heavily into doing plant-based research on the fungus and other plant-based psychedelics to identify novel opportunities, new molecules, other therapeutics, as well as anticipating the future market for psilocybin-producing mushrooms themselves, developing the standard procedures and protocols to grow psilocybin-producing mushrooms that are compliant and that will be all analytic with testing requirements in the same token. We're doing strategic investments in drug developments. As mentioned on one of the earlier panels, we talked about LSD, psilocybin, and VMA primarily, but there are countless psychedelics that have not been studied in depth and so there's great opportunity. There's no shortage of opportunity around psychedelics right now, so we're making some investments around that. Brian, who are you and why are you here? Well, that's a great question. So I have a couple of different perspectives. So I guess I will call myself an early cannabis investor. I started investing in the private side about five and a half years ago. And I was doing that while I was with the CEO of the tobacco business around me. So I was living, I lived in the world of understanding what does it mean to sell a harmful and dangerous product and what does that mean from a responsibility perspective? I had to live through not being FDA regulated to become an FDA regulated. And ultimately, I knew at some point I was gonna go to the cannabis space full time, so I formed Green Sky Strategy with two, almost some groups of people on the face of the earth. In Green Sky, we have two parts of what we do. One, we're kind of an operating team, consulting group we go in and help companies and we don't know how to run their business. We don't understand when cash is right, like right now, what do you need to do to really generate cash flows and have operational strategies. But we also have a second part of our business that is really kind of blind here. We have a holding company structure whereas we're kind of scouting the landscape. We identify what we think are business opportunities and then we put our team in place to build those out. So we're putting together a company called Modu. And Modu is a not only a civil side of us but it's an academic-focused company. And I think a lot of the panelists who came today, I actually agree with a lot of what they said around being science-driven, the need for clinical approaches. And everybody in this space, whether you believe that adult peace will happen in the war, this is going to be only from a pathway that needs to be without that same mindset. That's kind of part of how I water type in terms of the practical experience. So when Modu is all about is we really have kind of free prompts for our business strategy and we're trying to have a near-term revenue growth opportunity that helps fund the long-term So we've built a great network of unbelievable partners that include unique growth technologies. So one of the things that regulators do not like when you're talking about organic materials and natural variability. So partnerships on the growth technology side to produce consistent, efficacious products. We've also got a Schedule 1D lab that's going to be doing all of our clinical work and formulation work on the drug side. But we're starting to have a near-term focus on adaptogenics. So there's a lot of low-hanging fruit. There's big opportunity out there. So wines may enrich the varietals that are available there to really provide everyday relief to replace medications. And so that's really important to me because a couple of years ago I had a kind of dramatic experience that led me to a really severe amount of anxiety that happened when I was driving on a highway and literally I was unable to drive on the wheel on a highway for two and a half years. And it was crippling and humiliating. So I'm really compassionate about plant-based ways to deal with those types of ailments. So adaptogenics is a space that would be going to marketing this year with proprietary blend formulations going to consumers. We also have a line of growth products for the decriminalization efforts as they roll. There are, we want to reduce the barriers for those people who are in the space today who are actually want to or interested in growing their own psilocybin, for example. And those efforts are really a kind of short-term revenue stream that are gonna fund the clinical development of not only micro dosages for potential edulities but also more therapeutic applications as well. So this is an investor conference and we've talked a lot about science and we've talked a lot about not the investor side of this. And there are journalists here from Business Insider, which is a major investor publication, the Wall Street Journal, Cheddar. We are now 50 years into the war on drugs. And these molecules, these drugs have been demonized. Everybody in this room has heard just say no. Everybody in this room has seen the commercials of this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs. And this is not okay. So while you are not consumer focused companies right now, you will potentially eventually be. How do you educate the consumer market that this is not your brain on drugs, right? What are the messages? What are the vehicles? How do you tell your story? I think it starts with education and that has to be that concise. And we have never done at a time where consumers are creating more information about the choices they're making, no matter what they're doing in their life. Whether they're deciding what hotel is staying or deciding what to put in their bodies. So I do believe that the science is critical and important. So if I think about for us, and you've got the genocide, when you watch what's happening like in the CBD snake oil world, it's really disartening because there are, when you don't start with the science and how to actually think about consumer applications that by science, the world falls apart. So that's where we start. And then from a consumer standpoint, a lot of people think about barriers or things you can't do. And I just view that as just forcing you to be creative and think about what you can do. And so when you get into the civil society space and if you think about potentially a world where there could be adult youth there, again, I think there are a few centers that are gonna be a really important role or ways to have consumers be coached to get that full experience because it's really not something that you should just plow into on your own. So I believe education is really critical. Let me look at the consumer side. What do I do? How are you guys, other than us, how are you educating the market as to what field trip is and most importantly, demystifying the fear around whether it be civil society or any other psychedelic? I mean, I think Brian touched on that, frankly. It's evidence, but if you look at the evidence, the conversation becomes very easy, right? And I think we live in a world now, especially in North America, where cannabis has paved a very easy road five years in particular with substance. And so I think that's made it a lot easier conversation when we talk about conversations with people typically. Usually there's a brain diagram where we're about five seconds in my back. And then kind of talk, and when people ask questions, both bad sheriffs, and they talk about the evidence about how there's no substance to bad sheriffs. There's a hard shift, but when done, they're treated in context with the right support. You can always be treated with positive. And the conversation just moves along really quickly. Now, there are other things that are happening in society that make the conversations easier besides cannabis and growing conversations around mental health and mental fitness and how it's a life-long, negative, easy economy. Dealing with the fallout of the opioid crisis and then going distrust whether justified or not associated with pharmaceutical companies and people turning back to more holistic approaches, there's just a whole bunch of convergence and transits. Maybe conversation actually is quite easy overall. So you guys have both invested or raised money in the Canada space. Can you talk a little bit about the difference when you are sitting in front of whether it be a family office, a high net worth individual, or an institution when you're trying to pitch, whether it be field trip or green sky. Roy, talk about the experience, because you're closing around. Potentially gonna raise another round. So what has the experience been when you're actually pitching your company? The biggest difference has been that almost all the investors who are interested in this space are interested because they've had personal experiences. Profoundly positive personal experiences either directly or within one degree of their family members. And there's also a whole movement who know for a lot of interest from Silicon Valley attacking investors because in addition to the trends I talked about earlier, optimization, longevity, performance. So those are the sort of terms due to during these days that everybody seems to be focused on and psychedelics fits right into that. So it's a different base. It's an easier conversation. Certainly a lot of Canada is spent. There's a lot of people that made a lot of money in cannabis and they're a natural investing base because they see this as the next big swing. There are a lot of differences between cannabis and psychedelics, but at least on the preliminary flesh from an investor perspective, they see it as a next big home run or as Graham Saunders can produce to say, the next grand slam. So it's been a pretty easy conversation because it's been a natural base of cannabis investors as well as family offices are kind of more individual so personal experience. Yeah, I think all that goes something about the semesters. I think it's about such as about getting money, it's about who do you want money from and what is their interest, what is their intent? I personally think that matters a lot any time. What matters to me is who I work with, who are my partners and what are their motivations of a great interest. So again, people who are looking at the space are there for either a personal reason or that's driven them to really start to do the leg work to understand the science to understand what's going on with a lot of the great companies here today as an FDA and its history of psychedelics. So that's really where we start, right? If you have to really push to educate someone to convince them, I don't want for this an investor. And that might sound, you know, or hubris, but I think long-term, you want investors who buy into the chain with a long-term vision and opportunities for the space. For the cannabis base, and we'll stick with the investor stuff for a little bit. There was a pretty clear path to monetization, right? There were already medical kind of states, right? We knew that in 2012, there was a passage of adult use in Colorado and Washington. So there was a clear view, like, I'm gonna be able to put money into these companies. They're gonna start to generate money quickly. In this space, it's fundamentally different. This is much more of a pharmaceutical model where it could take five, 10, longer time. And the costs associated with bringing these drugs to market and commercialization can be tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. So when you're talking to institutions who historically, historically, like 10 years, have not invested in the cannabis market, are they are pharmaceutical investors, institutional pharmaceutical investors who are looking at you differently, or are you pitching it to different cohort of people than just the traditional, and I think using the word traditional about cannabis investor, but the traditional cannabis investor, and Brian, you can go first on this one. You know, I think that how I think about that is, again, it informs kind of our strategy and kind of our operational strategy, which is you do need to understand that on the, still a side of an opportunity, and the second of compounds, that is going to be a very long, expensive, clinically, scientifically driven process. But that's also why we do think there are near-term revenue generation opportunities in this space that are actually aligned to the overall mission of how can these compounds that are available, and readily available in legal variables and mushrooms be leveraged to a pretty good in society. So, kind of how we answer that is, we have a near-term revenue strategy that will help fund part of the clinical drug development side of our business, and you're actually right, it is a different mindset. If someone is looking for, hey, what's my return going to be in 2020 or 2021, versus what's the opportunity over at five or 10 year time horizon? So, it really is again, I think no one in your audience really understanding up front. What are they looking for from an investment opportunity now, or are you going to say? So Ron, part of your business model and you mentioned it earlier is clinics, right? You're opening up your first three clinics in the next few months, the first one in Toronto, then we're going to see here in New York, we're going to see in Los Angeles, potentially other cities. How does that play to the investor audience? Yeah, so our investor audience to date has not been a typical pharma or biotech investors. It's been more of a network of that entrepreneur type of stuff. But our belief is that our whole business model is based on these systems, this is pretty much sooner than most people expect. Certainly the clinical trials are going to happen and then very likely to succeed, fingers crossed they succeed. But for one psychedelic assistance psychotherapy is here now, can we just need to be repositioned to be seen as a psychedelic as opposed to what most go off and think is of course tranquilizer and ecstatic. But it's just changing that discourse and really because our operating thesis, although we follow the evidence, is that the psychotherapy, the mystical experience for lack of a better term is integral to the outcomes. I know a lot of work and investment is trying to remove that from the conversation, but we actually like that piece of thicket. It changes the overall conversation that's happening in medicine where the last 100 years or so have been driven by an allopathic medical approach where you get a drug to treat a problem. Whereas integrative medicine is becoming much more transparent, it's all about preventative medicine and the integration of all the systems in the body. So we like to have that conversation and that conversation is not a conversation for traditional biotech players, but we think there's rather use to be generated now, we think there's a brand to be generated now. We think we can see the valid initiatives in California and Oregon, which seem very likely to move forward. We do change, we'll see the same constitutional battle that happened in Canada back in 2001, which created legal access to medical cannabis at the time. That's almost certainly gonna happen sometime this year or next year. And so the markets are going to arrive, I think, a lot sooner than most critical FDA trials. And so that's why we built our operating pieces on, we don't know what gets across the line for Celeste position ourselves to be nimble and pivot and participate on whatever that looks like. And I think it's also gonna be a positive for the development of industry for capital to have a lower term time price. And I think that part of the downfall of cannabis was, as the first panel was talking about the Green Rock, right, people looking- By the way, there's a deal with my podcast. That's it. More than a year and now and a return today, what's the exit and when is big company that's gonna buy me and make me a millionaire? And that led to a lot of bad behavior from a competitive perspective. And then as soon as that capital turned off, which happened this year, I mean, the cannabis industry in California is in this moment happening, it's little mini version of the financial crisis of the country experienced in 2009. The capital is turned off, bills are not getting paid, money's not flowing, companies are going bankrupt. And not just slow companies, like big names that we all know and have heard. So I also think it is important that that longer time horizon, I think I agree with Ron, I think there's a lot, if you look at the initiative in Oregon, what that regulatory landscape looks like, what the state specific legal adult use medical landscape looks like, it's all going to evolve. And actually the more it evolves, I believe more slowly, the better off the video. So Sam, actually, why don't you stand up for a second? Sam is running the campaign in Oregon to structure a medical psychedelic market. So after this is over, everybody take out your checkbook and write same to check so that we can get this done. But the real question, I mean, I have a question about this, which is, and I don't need to put you on the spot, my friend, is that the right structure? Or is the FDA structure the way to go? Do we want to go the same way that cannabis went, which was a state by state, market by market structure where we start with a medical program and eventually evolve to adult use program? Or is the best way for this industry to really become an industry, the FDA group? What do you think, Brian? I think it's both. I mean, I think it's one of the limitations of modern medicine and drug development that you have to define the condition that you're seeking to get drug approval around. And depending on how you define that and how you define the patients in your study, you can be successful or not, whether the drug is effective or not. It's this question of statistics, not necessarily efficacy all the time. And so I like the idea of the room people at choice where there's a more holistic, natural approach where people can participate, whether they're sick or not. I think one of the things that we're excited about, and a lot of people in this room are probably excited about, or is the expensive potential of psychedelics, people who are, quote unquote, healthy normals. We all have trauma, we all have shit to deal with. All of us can be better off by using psychedelics in a properly controlled setting. So I really like what Lauren means doing. I think it's a smart way to do it. It's controlled, it's risk mitigating. It gives people access whether they're sick or not. It gives a natural alternative as opposed to a synthetic, which seems to resonate with a lot of people. So I think pursuing both is great. And I think there should be two systems that are operating side by side, one of purely medical and synthetic approach and one that's a more holistic, natural approach that's available to anyone who wants to participate. I agree, I think both matter. I do think on the state-by-state approach, there are lessons to be learned from the cannabis experience. So anytime you have a gray market or a black market for a product, how do you think about regulation? How do you think about taxation matters? So that's a unique aspect of any state-specific regulation. I also think that, and this sounds like Holy Grail is unachievable, but to the extent that states start to go, having a broader voice for the entire industry to help guide more harmonization, I think is something that the cannabis industry did not get right. And I think some of the East Coast markets are being a little bit more methodical and learning from that experience. But I also do believe that FDA plays an important role both on the clinical drug development, your medicinal approaches, but also from an overall oversight. I mean, I'm also a huge proponent of very strict standards that are not defined once a state becomes legalized for adult use of medicine, for physical use on dosing, product requirements. We shouldn't be in the business and trying to figure out what are the test methods. So all that work has to be done. And if it's done in the right phase, and I think states can go in a way that's still beneficial for the population. So whether this is a pharmaceutical model or a clinic model or whatever model, you guys are gonna have to market your product, whether it be to doctors or to patients. And we've seen the massive explosion on television of advertising for every drug that passes FDA approval. Last year, we tried to get the very first cannabis ad on TV and it was rejected, which was expected. So yes, we did do a stunt for Prairie Gridge. Rodin, how do you plan on marketing your clinics? How do you plan on talking both to referring doctors who can send patients to you and to do patient recruitment? Yeah, it's similar to markets of what we adopted or what we adopted to marketing our cannabis clinics, which is you have to be prudent at the end of the day. The success of our centers focused on psychosis and psychotherapy is going to be driven by our ability to get buy-in from a local medical community. So being two out of an itch pulling stunts like that, which I really appreciate because I've been in previous businesses, is not something that's in our playbook, at least for the foreseeable future. Leading with the added its driving successful PR campaigns to educate doctors and patients about the availability of these services, the benefits and the limitations. Yes, one of the things that was critical to the success of our last business and actually driving adoption of cannabis for therapeutic purposes across Canada is we said this isn't for everybody. This is not a panacea. We will not prescribe to everyone. We will only prescribe to patients who are appropriately using it and not really change the conversation. And so I think we can take a lot of lessons from that. Playbook and drive it forward here as well. So Brian, you've got other products that are beyond psychedelics. How do you plan on marketing, whether it be the lion's mane or the turkey tail or the other mushrooms in the home grow kits? Yeah, I think I'll need to get to that side. It is a much kind of clear kind of consumer-driven approach, but I still think it is. This is a very community driven environment today. And so leveraging that community and really being trusted and being a thought leader and building that community and being part of that movement is a part of our strategy. So we've got some great advisors who have been very active in this space for a very long time to really help guide us and be authentic. But also we still need to reach out to the people who are suffering, but might not thank or know that this is an academic arrival that might actually help them. And for us, that strategy really helps us build a brand in a more traditional CPG way. Obviously, in a 2020 technologically driven way, but that also creates the foundation for us that we can lever. So if you think about the micro, there was no new products that are administered in a therapeutic setting that we have that halo and that credential and that trust from the consumer that they're going to know what's there that is tested as back by science. I'm gonna ask one more question in the interview. You guys, we've got somebody from MAPS here who we, everybody in this room should thank because we're not for MAPS. We're not doing this for MAPS. But they have a different business model and USONA has a different business model which is the not-for-profit business model. And there is this tension in this industry of the not-for-profit model and the for-profit model. Why is there this tension? And what do we need to do to address it? Just talk about the for-profit versus not-for-profit model. We are a bashfully for-profit and it's not because we're worthless capitalists in fact we're in the process of getting registered as a B-court right now. But it's because we've named for-profit models the best way to scale. And the truth is most of the conversations we've had with the active participants in the non-profit side of things including MAPS, including USONA, they get it, they 100% get it and they're not opposed to it. The pushback tends to come from more of the community, the activists who have concerns around for-profit approaches and their concerns about it. We have more experience in the opioid crisis which is capitalism running muck, right? And so I think it's just really about trying to keep an open dialogue, being conscious and then doing this in a thoughtful manner. And I think a lot of those concerns can be elated and I think we can all work cooperatively and productively to the best possible outcomes which from my perspective is helping the most people either deal with traumas or other neurodegenerative or inflammatory diseases or help people expand and live more empathetic, creative, happy lives. And if we do that then we all win. So I think my sense is it's been overly cooperative so far, don't continue to do so. These are people leading this on both sides of for-profit and non-profit. I haven't seen that in two long years together. Yeah, absolutely agree. I think it's critical that both work together and I think it's also important that even for-profit and because every company you've heard from today I think has a very clearly or particularly admission about what they're trying to accomplish. And yes, although creating revenue and it's true of our student, of creating revenue and profit is what's behind the business but it's also about creating good for the community and better outcomes for individuals. But even in our case, we were having this conversation. One of my co-founders, Julia Chong, she said it, for her, it's critical that we're getting a part of our profits to MAPS, for example, to support the non-profit side and that those two sides in which you have to coexist and work together to create a truly sustainable environment for business. Why don't you stand up for a second? For MAPS, why don't you stand up for a second? So MAPS is, if everybody, yeah, MAPS is in the house, MAPS days three trials for MDMA for treating the PTSD, they are raising funds to get to the end, to an end point, to make sure that we can, anybody who has PTSD has access to that. So another person that you guys want to write a check to is that young lady right there. Okay, so now we'll open up the questions.