Healthcare
Here’s an exclusive look at the 21-slide pitch deck that psychedelics-education platform Fluence used to raise $3 million from top psychedelics VCs
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- When psychedelics go to market, hundreds of thousands of trained therapists will likely be needed.
- The psychedelics-education startup Fluence just raised $3 million from investors.
- The funding round is an indication that investors are looking beyond biotech.
Biotech companies in the psychedelics space have received the lion’s share of attention — and investor dollars — since the start of the industry. But that could soon change.
Fluence, a psychedelics-focused educational platform, announced Tuesday that it had raised $3 million to train therapists and other practitioners to administer psychedelic treatments for mental health. The seed round was led by the top psychedelics venture-capital firms JLS Fund, Palo Santo, and Neo Kuma. Other backers include LearnStart, which focuses on education tech, Evolve Ventures, which invests in food and retail companies, and Iter Investments, a psychedelics-focused venture-capital fund.
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While psychedelics biotech giants like Compass Pathways, GH Research, and Atai Life Sciences are looking to develop synthetic psychedelic compounds through clinical trials, Fluence is working to fill a key gap in the psychedelics space: training the people who will be tasked with administering those treatments. The new investment is an indication that VCs are moving beyond biotech and into the broader psychedelics ecosystem.
The psychedelic compounds in mid- and late-stage clinical trials are being developed to be given under the supervision of multiple professionals who have been specifically trained for such work. The compounds have powerful hallucinogenic effects, and treatment times can be long: Both the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies’ MDMA treatment, being developed for post-traumatic stress disorder, and Compass’ psilocybin treatment for resistant depression take several hours. Both treatments are expected to require extensive onboarding and offboarding sessions for patients once they come to market.
Fluence was founded by Elizabeth Nielson and Ingmar Gorman in 2019. The startup offers a mix of in-person and virtual services that provide companies and people with certificate programs and other trainings around psychedelic therapy.
Gorman told Insider while it was difficult to pinpoint how many professionals would be needed when these drugs go to market, he estimated that it “could be in the hundreds of thousands.”
The company said that it would use the new seed funding to expand its internal team and grow its educational platform to meet that expected demand.
Nielson told Insider the expansion would include more deals with organizations looking to develop drugs, set up trials, or build out clinics.
“It’s easy to scale a drug. It’s very challenging to scale humans to be able to deliver that drug,” Gorman said.
Fluence’s chief operating officer, Michael Kuntz, who spearheaded Fluence’s funding round, told Insider that as he was pitching the company to firms in the space, he felt that investors were keenly aware of the need for more professionals trained in psychedelics-assisted therapy.
“I think they had the realization that, if there’s not enough trained mental-health professionals to actually shepherd these drugs out to the patient population, then how are these companies going to ultimately succeed in the future,” he said, adding that investing in Fluence was also a way for some of these investors to protect their biotech investments.
Here is the 21-slide pitch deck that the psychedelics-education company Fluence used to raise $3 million from top psychedelics VCs
Fluence was founded in 2019 by Elizabeth Nielson and Ingmar Gorman to train therapists how to administer psychedelic drugs.
Fluence
The startup is focused on training healthcare professionals and other practitioners in psychedelics-assisted therapy. Investors, who have been largely focused on biotech, are showing interest.
Fluence
The company’s cofounders were involved in psychedelics before starting Fluence. Nielsen and Gorman worked as site co-principal investigators on MAPS’s phase-three clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD.
Fluence
Fluence’s seed round was led by the investment firms JLS Fund, Palo Santo, and Neo Kuma, which were included in Insider’s roundup of the top investment firms in the psychedelics space last year.
Fluence
See the full list here.
Mental illness is a big — and growing — problem in the US and globally, according to Fluence and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fluence
Recent research found psychedelics were proving to be a viable solution to mental-health issues, including depression and PTSD.
Fluence
Fluence says the emergence of psychedelics-research centers at top universities, legalization initiatives, and positive clinical data are leading to a “gaining acceptance of psychedelic drugs.”
Fluence
Many companies have jumped on the opportunity to develop psychedelics-based treatments for mental illnesses, but Fluence says there may be a “bottleneck” down the road because of a lack of trained therapists.
Fluence
Fluence predicts that in the years to come, hundreds of thousands of mental-health practitioners who know how to treat patients using psychedelics will be needed.
Fluence
Fluence says it exists at the intersection of all the players working within the psychedelics space.
Fluence
Michael Kuntz, the company’s chief operating officer, told Insider the company had trained more than 1,000 clinicians and that its goal was to train more than 1,500 additional professionals in 2022.
Fluence
Fluence says its goal is to train 25,000 healthcare professionals over the next five years.
Fluence
The company had been self-funded since it was founded in 2019, according to Gorman. But the founders decided to start fundraising to grow the company.
Fluence
Fluence is already generating revenue. Over the course of two years, Fluence says it has brought in over $750,000 in sales.
Fluence
The company offers both individual trainings and partnerships for organizations that want to do cohort trainings and receive consultations. Prices can range from several hundred dollars to about $10,000.
Kuntz said one of the company’s pilot programs focused on providing a more “self-paced” and asynchronous way of training that relied less on live training.
Fluence
Fluence wants to shape its platform offerings over the next few years by growing its enterprise training and on-demand learning.
Fluence
The company has a team of about 30 people, including full-time employees and independent contractors. Kuntz said Fluence planned to grow its team to 45 to 50 people by the end of the year.
Fluence
Fluence’s trainers include licensed therapists, researchers, and physicians.
Fluence
Fluence works with both giants of the psychedelics space — like MAPS — and early startups.
Fluence
“We know that pharmaceutical-drug development is extremely expensive and a pretty high-risk project proposal,” Kuntz said. “I think the place that I find a lot of comfort in what Fluence does is that we’re going to be around no matter who succeeds.”
Fluence