With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1425269
H He may have the right name for the job, but it took Craig Garden some time to find his passion. The Surrey native spent years as a project manager for vari- ous consulting firms before he and his wife, Brandi, made a personal discovery. A longtime triathlete and Ironman competitor, Garden started using so-called functional mushrooms to, as he puts it, "biohack my body." Brandi, on the other hand, used them to help treat psoriatic arthritis, a condition that can cause joint pain, stiffness and swelling. "It crippled her to a point that she couldn't walk with our newborn child back then," her hus- band says. "Now she's in full remission, thanks to functional mushrooms. It's quite remarkable." When the couple started making extracts from high-potency mushrooms sourced around the world, they realized they had the beginnings of a business on their hands. "We thought, Hey, we're onto something here, this isn't rocket science, and more people would prob- ably like access to it, being that it's not a pill," Garden says. He also talked with first-responder friends about their expe- riences treating post-traumatic stress disorder ( PTSD), anxiety and depression with psychoactive mushrooms, he adds. In March 2020, the Gardens applied to Health Canada for a controlled drugs and substances dealer's licence under the company name Eversio Wellness. They received a functional mushrooms licence this January and an authoriza- tion to sell psychoactive mushrooms in the summer, becoming one of the first Canadian companies to pull off the latter. Surrey-based Eversio now has some 18 employees and has engaged in research partnerships with universities across the country. Its products include capsules and powders made from func- tional mushrooms—the top sellers are Lion's Mane, Reishi and Turkey Tail (see page 36)—with psychoactive offerings scheduled for release soon. "People are questioning what they're putting in their bodies now more than ever," Garden says. "And these mushrooms are chang- ing their lives." T H E N E W C A N N A B I S ? Although many of the purported physi- cal and mental benefits of consuming mushroom extracts remain scientifically unproven, Eversio is one of several B.C. companies hoping to get flush from fungi. Relatively speaking, the startup is also a spore among toadstools. Big money has been funnelling toward psilocybin (the hallucinogenic substance in magic mushrooms) and functional mushrooms since New York–based Mind- Med became the first psychedelics pharma company to go public when it listed on Toronto's NEO Exchange early last year. Later in 2020, Berlin-headquartered startup Atai Life Sciences announced the closing of a US$125 million Series C fund- ing round led by Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel. Canadian companies soon followed suit. One is Toronto-based Field Trip Health, a developer of psychedelic therapies, which this past March closed a $95-million round led by U.S. investors. In the same month, Rritual Superfoods (which is headquartered in Vancouver but has sev- eral stateside executives, including its CEO) launched a $5.22-million initial public offer- ing on the Canadian Stock Exchange for its functional products. They won't be the last Canadian mush- room players to go public. Vancouver- based Origin Therapeutics, founded this year with the aim of investing in psyche- delics companies, hopes to list by the end 34 BCBUSINESS NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 MARKET CAP Consumers and investors have a growing appetite for psychedelic and functional mushrooms