Saks Snacks #20: Let's Take a Deep Breath
😮💨 Breathwork 🌇 Wellness Tourism 💯 Centennarian Olympics 🍄 Psychedelics, & More
Greetings from San Francisco 👋 ,
Your health + tech updates are quick this week: 2 snacks, 2 venture raises, 2 podcasts of the week, and 1 spark moment!
Reading is and should be fun. I encourage you to explore what interests you most.
#1 💰 Capital Raise Radar Snacks
The quick bullets from 2 venture raises within the last few months:
🍄 Psychedelics research startup Maya Health, raised $4.3 Million last month to decentralize psychedelic medicine research. Funding will help Maya Health go to market with its paradigm-shifting platform in 2022. With its mental health software for psychedelic practitioners, Maya Health is assembling a global community of participants, providers, researchers, and regulators to support decentralized psychedelic medicine.
Mission: Our mission is to advance safe and accessible psychedelic medicine practices by empowering providers with tech they need to map care journeys.
Adam’s Take: I believe psychedelic compounds’ power can be harnessed for good in clinical environments. Clinical research will continue evolving in this space, and there are several other use cases outside of just treating anxiety and depression. Combining therapy with this medicine in controlled environments is key to continue driving results. While overdoses are rare, and the compounds aren’t addictive, it’s still important for chaperoned drug trips and adequate attention being paid to adverse reactions with people with disorders such as schizophrenia. If interested, you can explore more info in pod #2 of the week!
Jasper Health, an NYC-based cancer care coordination and experience platform raised a $25M Series A led by General Catalyst last month.
What they do: They streamline and simplify “every aspect of cancer care”. This process is a complicated, emotional process for 1.8M people annually diagnosed with cancer. Jasper has ~12k cancer patients and caregivers that have used the platform since last year’s launch The Series A enables Jasper to expand its platform to several healthcare organizations, including payers, self-insured employers, and health systems that provide cancer care.
Jasper aims to remove the stress of organizing cancer care (planning appointments, tracking symptoms, accessing resources) and save time. Results: ~70% of members report less stress and anxiety, and 80% report better medication adherence.
#2 🥑 Snacks of the week (2)
Wellness Tourisms’ Bright Future: People want to travel and improve their well-being. The Global Wellness Institute is forecasting the wellness tourism market to reach $817B and rise to $1.3T by 2025 - the fastest growth rate of any wellness market through 2025.
Web3 x Investing - SyndicateDAO was featured in Forbes with its deep dive into DAOs, “DAOs Aren’t A Fad — They’re A Platform” - and how they’ll change the future of work, community, and capital.
My Take: DAOS aren’t replacing traditional VC tomorrow, or any time soon. Founders need playbooks and operational efficiency, which the DAO venture model doesn’t quite provide.
With that said, I believe in several different DAO archetype (protocol treasury DAOs, service DAOS, and investment clubs like Syndicate.
DAOs’ power will only continue increasing and if done right, can democratize crypto investing, giving access to those that never had this access.
#3 🎙️ Pods of the Week - 2 of this week’s listens
Breathwork: A few notes from the expert Emily Hunter:
Linkage to autonomous nervous system: The breath can be a direct link to your ANS in a way that we usually don’t have any control over
Breath is so simple and accessible, and can tell our entire body to relax, and get us out of a sympathetic state. It’s an incredibly powerful mechanism to tell our body we’re able to enter a deep state of rest and relaxation
Committing to a daily practice with Othership has inspired me to start an essay on breath work’s impact - more to come!
Meditation, psychedelics, and fasting:
Notable quote from Geoffrey Woo: “It’d be very incurious not to dive into the psychedelic realm given its therapeutic potential”
It’s hard to argue with Dr. Maloof who cites suicidal patients turning their lives around, depressed patients overcoming depression, and people emerging out of dark periods and extreme burnout.
Psilocybin’s treatment of depression: About a year ago, I’d read the Lexapro vs. Psilocybin research paper and Peter Attia’s take, which was the starting point that opened me up to psilocybin’s clinical efficacy and its advantages over Lexapro.
At the end of the day, I’m curious to keep up with these developments and consuming any and all significant studies measuring psychological well-being, flourishing and social functioning as a result of these efforts.
#4 💥 Spark Moments - from 15 months + 1 month ago
What would you want to do in the ‘Centenarian Olympics’?
I don’t expect you to know, but I hope this week’s section gets you thinking!
12/18/20 Daily Moment Entry: Peter Attia introduced the "Centenarian Olympics" on a podcast and he asked a powerful question:
"What does a 95-year old version of you" want to do specifically or conceptually?
This is a question I'll ponder.
My short list (that I hope to add to) from that date:
Walk 3 miles outside to be able to enjoy a long walk with a loved one / friend
Bodyweight Push-up + pull-up x 1 (why not? am I selling myself short?)
Be able to walk up a flight of stairs unassisted
409 days later, I found myself adding to that list…
1/31/2022 Daily Moment Entry: Today, I caught up with a work colleague about her recent dream wedding. It was beautiful to hear about how it went.
What I found even sweeter than the (awesome) guy she’s marrying was when she shared that she got to tell her grandma it was the best day of her life, and that her 85 year-old grandma was on the dance floor all night long.
*newly added on 1/31/21*: Be able to dance the entire night at my (great-great?) grandkids’ wedding, if i play my cards right.
What would you want to do at age 100?
I’d love if you’d bravely respond for others to see in the comments below. If not, my DM’s are open.
You’ll catch me doing some bachata in 70ish years, and I’ll catch you next week for my first essay out of 5 essays coming the next 5 weeks: “Why do I write?”.
Have a great week til’ then.
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Have a creative week,
Adam
At age 100, I would like to be bowling in the Centenarian Olympics. . . or the neighborhood bowling alley.😊