Hello Mycopreneurs,

Welcome to the Mycopreneur Newsletter, your one stop shop for catching up to speed with fungal innovation and mycelial happenings around the world.

There’s no Mycopreneur Incubator this week due to Global Psychedelic Week, which is in full swing. We’ll be back with our regularly scheduled Incubator next Thursday, November 13 at the regular time. The invite will be in next week’s newsletter.

Today is Day 5 of 7 of the inaugural GPW, an online and in-person event featuring people from 100 + countries sharing cutting edge insights and intel on psychedelic culture and science. The main programming is online, and in-person satellite events are happening in more than 20 countries concurrently as part of official GPW programming as well. There are a number of events in major cities set to kick off tonight through Sunday, so check here to see if there’s anything local for you.

Check out these pictures from GPW events in Austin, Texas and Charlotte, North Carolina below - there are big events scheduled in San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Petersburg, Florida, and internationally in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Goa, India, Oaxaca City, Mexico, and many more this weekend. The last photo is from the keynote presented by Olga, a curandera from the Shipibo-Conibo tribe in the Peruvian Amazon who we had a crew produce a video interview with to close down Day 3 of GPW.

The 3rd Annual African Rising mushroom Festival presented by Mycelium Matters and Eco-Agric Uganda is making international news thanks to the diligent efforts of Aixarret Hernandez and Maximilian Esparza, two of the most impactful young mycopreneurs anywhere in the world.

I’m elated to be joining them in person at the festival in Uganda, and will be headed there next week to participate in this groundbreaking intercultural exchange of mushroom knowledge and applied mycology. This festival will feature hands on workshops aimed at teaching local Ugandans how to cultivate mushrooms for food security and economic opportunity, using available resources in a low-tech environment, talks from international experts aimed at inspiring people to connect with the broad utility of fungal innovation for community and professional development, and much more.

Check out their recent feature on KTSM El Paso spreading the news about the African Rising Mushroom Festival - one of numerous morning news segments and print media pieces promoting the event.

The billionaire pop icon and ‘Eras’ singer Taylor Swift just flexed a pair of mycelium fashion items durign a night out in New York City. She rocked mycelium snake-print boots and a matching bag from Stella McCartney.

The myco materials revolution has made inroads into the world of luxury fashion as evidenced by mycelium product lines produced by international powerhouses such as Hermes in collaboration with pioneering mushroom materials design firm MycoWorks, the Mylo mushroom-based vegan leather alternative product line by lululemon, and more.

The fact that one of the biggest pop stars on the planet is strutting around NYC in mushroom-based fashion attire and catching media attention focused on the fit is a prime example of the continuing rise of mushroom entrepreneurship and applied mycology in real world scenarios - from disenfranchised rural populations living below the poverty line in Uganda to the billionaire jet-set class, mushroom innovation is touching every level of society.

Shoutout to PsiloSafe for sponsoring both this newsletter and Global Psychedelic Week. As those who attend the Mycopreneur Incubator, or pay attention to the ‘magic mushroom product’ landscape know, the market is awash with dubious products that are often vaguely labeled and in many cases which don’t actually contain any mushrooms or psilocybin at all. This is referred to y some as the ‘gas station gummy’ market. PsiloSafe is a hugely valuable service that helps to mitigate potential harms and adulterated product consumption by providing third-party, independent verification of labeling integrity and accurate dosing measurements. Their work is invaluable and everyone involved in the psychedelic space should be intimately aware of PsiloSafe and what they are doing. Check out their site below.

This week’s Mycopreneur Podcast dropped yesterday, and it features Robert Lattig of Healing Herbals making his return to the show. Rob shares stories from his recent trip to South Africa to visit the Kanna farm that they are leasing to maintain full vertical integration of their business operations.

This type of stewardship and direct from the source transparency is extremely rare in the ethnobotanical space; most brands buy bulk from suppliers on the other side of their world or indiscriminately from random vendors online, so what Rob and Healing Herbals are doing stands out to me in a big way. We also talk about the Amanita muscaria mushroom extraction process and cover lots of other ground such as the Kava Bar industry, Jamaican Dogwood, Kratom, etc. Highly recommend listening to this episode to get the inside take from a very successful mycopreneur operating on an internationla scale.

In other news, I had two articles published with Double Blind Magazine this week as well as the closing piece in the print magazine Shroomski Magazine.

The first Double Blind piece is a (mostly) satirical Halloween piece about the frightening potential of psychedelic mainstreaming, and the most recent piece is about the emergent Iboga Consumer Packaged Goods market. I haven’t seen the Shroomski one yet since the print magazine is en route and I wasn’t able to attend the launch party in Denver, but I’ll share more about that on my Instagram soon. It’s titled “The Underground Sets The Standards”. The Double Blind pieces are linked below.

And speaking of SupplySide Global, shoutout to our longtime partners and sponsors at Real Mushrooms who were out there with the team at the biggest B2B convention in the health and nutrition supplies industry.

Alright, I’m in Siciliy and it’s time to go get a Cornetto and an Espresso. Thanks for reading the Mycopreneur Newsletter and please hit me in the replies to let me know your thoughts on today’s edition.

See you at next week’s Mycopreneur Incubator.

DW