Navigating Psychedelic Entrepreneurship: Insights from Upcoming SXSW Panel and Beyond

Exploring the vibrant landscape of psychedelic entrepreneurship, this edition delves into the latest developments from SXSW, macrodosing functional mushrooms, navigating social media marketing challenges, and even the unexpected possibility of mushrooms turning into gold.

A bit of what is in today’s edition:

🍄 Psychedelic Panel at SXSW: Entrepreneurship Unveiled

🍄 Macrodosing Functional Mushrooms: High-Dose Benefits

🍄 Social Media Marketing: Navigating the Challenges

🍄 From Mushrooms to Gold: The Unexpected Revelation

This is a big week for the psychedelic space, and Mycopreneur is right there in the thick of it.

We’re headed to the legendary SXSW (South by Southwest) conference in Austin to moderate a panel on the Psychedelics track of the conference programming.

We’re on a panel titled “Psychedelic Entrepreneurship and the Underground Economy” featuring journalist Mary Carreon, Oakland Hyphae founder Reggie Harris, and Bob Johnson of Mycroboost.

In a conference track stacked with biotech and pharmaceutical company representatives working towards bottlenecking legal access to psychedelics via patented synthetic molecules exclusively obtainable through costly, state-regulated frameworks - it’s an honor to represent the ‘legacy market’ for mushrooms in their unadulterated, spore-to-door form.

Functional mushrooms are experiencing unprecedented demand in North America thanks in large part to the explosion of interest in psilocybin mushrooms that has swept the land. The reasons for the proliferation of this “Shroom Boom” are manifold, but a few key events include:

The publication of Michael Pollan’s influential ‘How to Change Your Mind’, which extensively details the author’s own personal - and explicitly illicit - profound experiences with psilocybin mushrooms. 

The release of the documentary ‘Fantastic Fungi’ in October 2019 - a seminal work which for a time became the #1 most streamed release on Netflix while providing global audiences a deep dive into the magical world of mushrooms in a visually stunning and scientifically compelling manner like never before.

The outpouring of positive topline data from numerous peer-reviewed studies on psilocybin therapy from the world’s most respected academic institutions.

Now that the world is utterly captivated by the enchanting properties of the long maligned and misunderstood psilocybin mushroom, the floodgates have opened to broader cultural fascination with countless other species of the ‘forgotten kingdom’ of fungi - which immediately leads to the healthful properties of non-psychedelic medicinal mushrooms.

The functional mushroom market has already ballooned in size over the last few years and is anticipated to double within the next 6 years.

Many people have adopted these ‘adaptogenic mushrooms’ into their daily health regimen, but the majority of use cases are limited to what effectively amounts to a ‘microdose’ size intake.

But what happens when you macrodose functional mushrooms?

Multiple extraction wizards in the Mycopreneur circle have each separately told me about the incredible effects they’ve experienced from ‘getting high on their own supply’ and consuming macrodose amounts of their beloved fruiting body extracts. The frame of reference for measurement I have for these high-dose experiences comes via the anonymized mycopreneurs sharing their experiences of pounding a whole 30 ml bottle of the tinctures they make. 

Of specific interest here are claims that high dose Reishi extract can provide a “THC-like high”, and that high doses of Lion’s Mane and Cordyceps can amplify the purported benefits that come from regular serving sizes - For Lion’s Mane, a purportedly more lubricated and focused cognition that ‘makes you feel like the guy in the movie Limitless’ - a reference to the 2011 motion picture that features a mysterious pill that grants users access to 100% of their brain’s abilities - and for Cordyceps, a surge of energy that enables incredible endurance.

** It should be noted that there is little if any scientific investigation into any potentially adverse health effects from consuming large amounts of functional mushroom tincture at one time - I’m certainly not advocating for people to do it here, but instead am presenting a unique area of potential study that’s been underrepresented in the mainstreaming of functional mushrooms.

According to Hernan Castro, ‘The Desert Alchemist,’ wild medicinal mushrooms are more potent than those cultivated indoors because they are forced to develop a stronger immune system to respond to the myriad pressures and threats imposed by the wild ecosystem they grow within.

I’m not making any definitive claims here personally, but this line of reasoning checks out on my end - what do you think?

Social media offers incredible content marketing opportunities to drive brand recognition and product offerings, but it comes with a unique set of perils and pitfalls that many of us have found ourselves adversely impacted by.

I mean….remember when the OG Mycopreneur Instagram account @mycopreneurpodcast was permanently de-platformed at over 25k followers with zero warning over a video about an explicitly legal ‘Kanna’ supplement? Because I sure do ( :

Oftentimes, the community guidelines framing what you can and cannot say or show on social media as a cannabis or psychedelic brand seems arbitrary and extremely context-dependent - for example, the viral sensation ‘Psychedelic Water’ brand crossed $1 million in sales within 7 months of launching almost exclusively thanks to their explosive virality on TikTok.

The #psychedelicwater hashtag has over 10 million views within months of launch, and the company leveraged their virality to prominently appear IRL at high-visibility events with globally recognized social media influencers at music festivals and exclusive parties.

 Though the incredible fervor around the brand has somewhat subsided since their burst onto the scene in 2019, that didn’t stop them from raising a $4 million Series A round at a Pre-money valuation of $45 million in May of 2022.

More recently, the effervescent cannabis and functional mushroom-infused Brez has been absolutely crushing it in their first year as a company, and content marketing plays a huge role in their success. Check out the screenshot below documenting the stratospheric February numbers coming out of camo Brez courtesy of founder Aaron Nosbisch

Brez scaled from zero to well over $1 million in sales in under a year, with February being their biggest month ever to the tune of $850,000 in sales - including a recent $50k day. This stratospheric rise has come thanks in a large part to their digital content strategy. 

Social media platforms are notorious for their wishy-washy enforcement of community guidelines against cannabis and psychedelic brands, but Brez offers us a compelling case study with regards to their stratospheric virality and corresponding sales increase courtesy of TikTok shop. 

Their recent ad campaign eschewed traditional high budget ad agency production aesthetics and instead featured founder Aaron Nobisch sitting by a campfire and sharing the origin story of Brez while drinking their Lion’s Mane ‘microdosed mushrooms in a can’ offering. This video skyrocketed to over  2.2 million views within a week, driving a deluge of sales on the TikTok shop. 

Closer to home, I’ve leveraged the principles of viral content marketing to raise brand awareness for my sponsor Mycroboost - in particular, the satirical video I made of my experience at the Ozora Festival in Hungary in August 2023 prominently featured a plug for the Mycroboost products I had on hand with me, racking up over 3 million views across platforms.

Part of the success of this particular campaign came in the form of numerous popular meme pages across platforms reposting the reel - one of these pages hit 2 million views all on its own.

‘Meme Marketing’ has massively unharnessed potential and is a viable way of reaching hard to reach Gen Z audiences who are a different breed entirely than their ad agency-addled predecessors in many cases. Expect more on this front out of this newsletter soon -

But how can other creators and brands navigate the extraordinary opportunities provided by social media platform sales when so many pitfalls exist re: censorship and deplatforming?

I’ve been enjoying ’High Notes’ by Sofie Mikhaylova and Cass Zingone, which was launched in Fenruary of 2024 to help cannabis and psychedelic entrepreneurs stay in the good graces of the social media platforms they’re marketing on while driving results with best practices.

Mushrooms to gold? Is the ‘Philosopher's Stone’ actually… the Philosopher’s Stone?

A team of researchers in Goa, India has claimed that they’ve been able to transubstantiate the ubiquitous Termitomyces genus into nanoparticles of gold. 

Ummmm….What?

This timeline is getting increasingly bewildering. I did not have ‘Indian researchers turn mushrooms into gold’ on my 2024 Bingo card.

Incidentally, here’s an image of an impressive patch of Termitomyces that I captured while in India for the Shroom Sabha mushroom festival earlier this year. This picture actually made it into High Times as part of my coverage of the event.

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