Deconstructing the $1B psychedelics industry w/ VC Brom Rector

"I want to fund the company that's inventing the Tesla Model S of psychedelics," says Brom Rector, founder of Empath ventures, a venture capital firm investing in the future of psychedelic medicine. A consumer of psychedelics himself for over a decade, he saw there was an opening in the newly forming for-profit psychedelics industry. Here he defines what psychedelic drugs actually are, which are considered medical or will soon be approved for medical purposes, and the answers may be surprising. Brom also addresses the benefits of psychedelics compared to the traditional treatments as well as misconceptions, and stigmas. There are some surprising potential uses for the drugs, including as treatment for alcoholism and premature ejaculation. Also discussed are the possibility of them being offered as an employee benefit, and any pitfalls of their becoming mainstream. Quotes: "One thing I discovered was that there are a lot of people that had made a lot of money in crypto that were very, very interested in psychedelics, and so I raised a lot of money very, very early on from a lot of like crypto rich guys. And then I also very interestingly raised a decent chunk of money from like, some real estate guys that you would not really think at first glance would be into psychedelics like totally different, you know, kind of just type of asset class, but they were interested." (9:53-10:22 | Brom) "There's this growing body of evidence that suggests that psychedelics are much more effective treatments at treating things like depression, anxiety than these traditional drugs are." (22:34-22:41 | Brom) "One of the cofounders of Alcoholics Anonymous, he was really into this idea that they should use LSD as part of the Alcoholics Anonymous process to get people off of alcohol. Not as something that you take every day instead of drinking a beer every day, but something that you do maybe once or twice, and have this visionary experience that helps you realize that alcohol is messing up your life and that you should, you know, take a break from it." (29:07-29:29 | Brom) Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandell TikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926 Connect with Brom Rector: LinkedIn: @bromrector Twitter: bromrector Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm