BVE is a Bespoke Venture Capital Platform

We're an early stage life sciences venture capital fund focused on healthcare innovation with cannabinoids and Psychedelics. Once taboo and systematically criminalized, select cannabinoids and Psychedelics are now considered viable treatment options for critical unmet medical needs. Promising clinical trials already underway aim to ease the global mental health, pain and addiction crises. We are seeing exciting work in new therapies for cancer treatment, depression, PTSD, Alzheimer's, and fibromyalgia, just to name a few.

Since inception, BVE has been at the forefront of new tools on the verge of availability to the patients for whom traditional treatments are insufficient. Our mission is to invest in tackling healthcare's biggest challenges through policy, science and entrepreneurship.

Why Now?

Once off limits, cannabinoids and psychedelics are now considered viable treatments. Unlike the initial cannabis “green rush” on the back of easing regulations, we are now seeing legitimate research organizations conducting research, and the early results are extraordinary. Where the recreational markets consumed the most investor capital (and failed to deliver returns) the entrepreneurial energy we are investing in is advancing scientific discoveries poised to disrupt over $7 trillion of therapeutic indications.

Without institutional venture capital firms like BVE, the founders can not access the capital they need at the earliest stages of development.

Our Predictions for 2023

While we are seeing a number of favorable activities like those mentioned above, investing in start ups is risky business, and not for the inexperienced. As investors we all need to go beyond the headlines, no matter how exciting. Investing in disruptions requires an institutional investment rigor designed to flush out interesting ideas, and back the founders actually building the companies of the future.

Trend #1: Unicorns are Out

We believe raising money for larger cannabis and Psychedelics companies whose earlier investments were at stratospherically high valuations (owing to the typical buzz before an industry trajectory is fully laid out) will be near impossible. This will either kill the unicorns (current or otherwise expected) or force significant down-rounds. This trend is driven from an awareness that BVE has had for many years now highlighted the risk of hype which is now coming home to roost. We remain hopeful that the best run companies don’t suffer merely from valuation trends.

Trend #2: FDA Approvals

We think the first wave of significant FDA approvals will come in 2023 and 2024. The university-sponsored and privately funded research is promising and already shows that many of the compounds, natural and formulated molecules are safe and well tolerated. Equally important, the efficacy in terms of patient outcomes seems to be very promising.

While we can’t say the same for some entrepreneurs and investors who may be drawn to the promise of wealth over the rigor of proven efficacy through stage 2 and 3 clinical trials, we see the medical community of researchers and clinicians gravitating to Psychedelics who understand the high bar for clinical proof. This is a key indicator to us that they find the research so compelling. The data is drawing the medical community in and funds like ours watch this medically-driven interest. Organizations that normally would have been reluctant to look at Psychedelics as viable treatment options are investing in significant research to develop new protocols and therapies. We think the regulatory agencies have now enough of a tailwind from available research they will start to provide approvals. We may also start to see early emergency use authorizations for last-ditch healthcare triage efforts. And, likely, we will start to see the FDA decline to approve requests as well as feedback on the wave of applications they have received in the last few years.

Trend #3: Failures and Fallout

Unlike the first wave of consumer cannabis investments, the current wave of efforts to drive clinically provable results requires a much greater level of sophistication and capital. Personality-driven companies will be replaced by science-driven innovators who are well versed in and have the time horizon to prove efficacy using FDA-mandated processes. 

As a result, we will continue to see attrition in the marketplace with companies that are underfunded or do not have a critical mass of scientific or healthcare resources either internally or through their funding sources. Having PhD’s on founding teams is now becoming necessary and commonplace.

Conversely, we will see the companies that are backed by experienced founders with key scientific innovation and acumen as well as an intellectual property plan, will continue to operate, and in many cases grow while completion falls flat.

The reality of venture capital and entrepreneurship is that it is hard to do–it is hard to invest, it's hard to build companies. Just because our communities are accepting the fact that Psychedelics are here doesn't mean that there's a free pass for entrepreneurship.

In Conclusion

BVE and our partners fundamentally believe that because of the high bar for clinical proof, early stage organizations will benefit immensely, even pre-investment, by partnering with investors who bring more than just capital. Truly adding value to the pioneering start ups in this new frontier of life sciences requires policy and regulatory access, scientific understanding and a commitment to finding the truth. We join our entrepreneurs in the trenches of company building companies every day. This philosophy and the operational platform we have built, truly  sets us apart as a venture capital firm in this emerging healthcare market.