Finding Joy and Success on Life's Serpentine Road ft. Sa’ad Shah

27:47We were one of the first ones to do tail hedging, but very complex version of tail hedging. We were trying to find the cheapest form of volatility that would really hedge our tails, our left tails, during some very stressed market environments. And we did well in those environments, right? So we had the ability now, all of a sudden, where everybody else was down anywhere from 25 % to 40%, we were flat to a little bit high, but we had capital available to deploy in those markets. And so the trajectory for DGAM was really during those years, and that ultimately caught the attention of the car livelihood.

28:23Right. And so they buy DGAM. Was that a hard decision for you all to go under the umbrella? Because you kind of sound like you're out there pushing the envelope, doing things no one else is doing. There's a sort of excitement to that. And Carlisle's well-known traditional, they're kind of big. Did it feel like you were selling out? I mean, you were selling, but did it feel like you were selling out? How did you all view that? Yeah, we were closing in on about 10 years by then, right? And what we really needed to kind of take it to the next level, we were already close to about$7 billion in assets.

29:05And what we really needed was that form of permanent capital behind us that would allow us to now get to the$20,$30 billion. And we felt that Carlisle was the perfect shopper because they had already entered into the hedge fund foray, right? They had taken over a lot of assets from Peters Hill Fund, which was at Goldman. And so they had Clarence Road, they had Vermillion, they had Trafalgar. So we felt, OK, they understand hedge funds. We think they understand hedge funds. So let's now talk to them about it. And look, David is incredibly charismatic, charming. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.

29:47I've learned a lot from him and spent a decent amount of time with him. Well, a short period of time, but it was concentrated time. And they were going down a path that at the time made sense. I think ultimately, it wasn't the best trade for either of us. Ultimately, I think it was just that really, you had to speak a different nomenclature when it came to hedge funds. It was no longer about multiples or MOIC or DVPI. TVPI was now all about alpha, beta, sortino ratio, sharp ratios. And you had a sales team that has been entrenched at Carlyle for a very long time that needed to be brought up the curve in terms of how to speak that language.

30:31And hedge funds have a role in a portfolio that are very meaningful. I mean, we showed that in years like 2008, 2009, 2011. But I think that that mismatch, we didn't pay a lot of attention to, didn't realize. And ultimately, when Carlyle kind of shut down all their hedge fund operations, we were a casualty of that too. So we were, you know, but I had left about six months before that had happened. I decided to leave because I saw kind of the writing on the wall. And I wanted to venture into launching a quant equity fund. I thought that would be the best thing to do. And there was a model that was at work.

31:10It was an AI-driven model. I was excited about it. I went to David. I said, listen, David, this is what I'd like to do. And he said, look, I'm not going to stand in your way. But if it doesn't work out, come back. And I said, I will. I will. Yeah, that's a very stand-up thing to do. Oh, absolutely. David was a guest on My Life in Four Trades. And it was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing to spend that time with him. And that anecdote fits what, you know, I'm not surprised to hear that he handled it that way. He's also a sort of diplomat at heart. I think you share that passion, right? Yeah, that's exactly right.

31:49So it's interesting. So that was your best trade. But then, you know, thinking about it, there are also parts of it. A lot of the best trades have worse trade elements and vice versa, which we're going to get to when we get to number four as well, I think. But your third trade you just mentioned. So you leave Carlisle on your own volition and you you launch this AI driven quant equity fund. And this is 2016. It strikes me that we you know, all we talk about is AI now. But that was you know, those were early days. Is this what we would we would think of as like an algo quant fund? You know, is that is that how we kind of talked about it?

32:28No, no, no, no. It's really interesting because it's it's it was the model. was using natural language processing to be able to decipher, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of pieces of text and then infer from that what that would, how that would impact the market. And then we take that information and we would look to, you know, like into call options when certain, you know, things were triggered. And these would be longer dated call options that had a lot of convexity in it. And so we would look to trade on that. At the same time, we had a model that would leg into put options and precipitate a ladder approach to put options.

33:15And then the third strategy was that we would actually write put options as well. So combining the writing of the put options and going long put options and then also going long the call options, combined, made a lot of sense on paper. And the model sort of, you know, was started to work really well early on. And, you know, we launched with our own capital early in 2016. And by February, we're up 38%. Wow. That's some success. I know. And so we were going, great. This is amazing. And so we wanted to spend a whole year trading our own capital and then show really good results for it, and then go out and raise your$20,$30,$40,$50 million for the fund.

34:04And it was a team of seven of us. And February rolls around. Brexit happens. The AI could not compute Brexit. And then comes back and says, we were down a fair amount. Then we started to get back up again. And then Trump happens. And then AI says, I could not compute that. And so we ended the year being down 1%. And then, you know, our capital was gone. And that, of course, was not easy. But we decided that there's no way we're going to be able to go out. If we were able to show that in those stressed environments with Brexit and Trump happening in the same year, we did well, then we've got a case.

34:44But so, you know, a lot of lessons, of course, tremendous amount of lessons. I can write a couple of volumes on that, by the way. But it was something that I felt that I had to go through and it didn't work out that we were expecting. Yeah, so it is one of your worst trades. It's interesting, though, that there's a pattern because it seems like you are constantly challenging yourself or following the thing that's most intellectually interesting to you. A bit of a risk taker in that respect. Like you leave security for the unknown. Again, this time it didn't work out. But there's a trend. There is.

35:24And what I learned later on is that I'm something that's known as a manifesting generator, according to some human design studies. And what that means is that I need to rely on certain centers to give me validation whether this is something I want to do. But oftentimes, I have to be engrossed and involved in it. Only then will I realize, is this something I want to do or not? So other people will say, do you want to go into banking? And they'll know whether they want to go into banking or not. For me, at the time when I went in, I was like, I think I want to go in, but I'm not sure. I've got to try it out to really know.

35:56And then you go in and you do it and then you go, this is not for me. But no, I'm not averse to taking risks. I just feel that if you don't take risks and you don't break your comfort zone, you're never going to really progress. And it's a core part of my personality and my traits. And I've taken a lot of risks, Maggie, and a lot of them have not worked out for me at all. But yes, you're right. It is a bit of a trade to me to kind of like, you know, let's do this and we're going to find out if it's going to work or not because otherwise we can sit here and it'll be analysis paralysis, right? We can, you know, think of all the ways in which it can't happen.

36:35And sometimes you just have to do the 5-4-3-2-1 rule, which is, you know, you think of something and you go 5-4-3-2-1, just do it. Don't think about it. Just do it. Just jump. Just jump. Just jump. What do you think you learned from that experience in terms of funds and launching funds and your career, really? What did that failure teach you? It was very humbling, right? You thought that you had built all these relationships up with institutional investors that would support you in endeavors like this. And you really got to know that first and foremost, when it comes to speaking with institutional investors as opposed to family offices and high net worth individuals, they're very different kettle of fish, right?

37:28And institutions are very much about check the box exercise. You've got to meet certain criteria and parameters. And that all sort of came to a culmination. And I realized that you had to approach each of these parties in a very different way. Institutions were not going to be interested in this quant equity thing because it's just too small of a fund for them. So I was focusing on family offices and ultra high networks and just understanding their utility function, their objectives. So that was a big learning. I'm going into business with closest friends where they are friends first and then become business colleagues later.

38:12Bad idea. OK, not good. I would not recommend it. It doesn't really typically work out really well. And so that was that was another big major lesson. But just how to set up business, what to bring first into the equation, where to spend the money, how to hire the right talent. And I mean, lots of lessons that way that could have done better, for sure. Which I'm assuming are paying dividends now because your fourth trade is your current trade. And it sounds like in some ways it grew out of the failure of the quant fund. Because if that had taken off, you may have continued doing that. But it didn't.

38:53So you end up launching Noetic. So this one, I think we're also filing under, as I mentioned, best and worst. Worst in terms of the challenging environment, but best in terms of some of the other ways you feel about it. So let's unpack all of this. What is noetic first? So what fund do you set up now? Are you still going in this sort of esoteric, complicated financial trades, or is it something else? yeah i think a core part of you know i'm realizing even as i'm speaking to you there there's certain themes that that resonate throughout my life esotericism does so and what is esoteric it's just something that's left of center it's not mainstream it's left of center it's in the fringe um where uh you know you don't pay much attention to it and then once you do start to pay much attention to it and everybody else starts to pay attention to it all of a sudden it becomes mainstream, but it starts off on the fringe.

39:53And the other one is complexity, right? And I often try and explain to people, there's a difference between complicated and complex. Complicated is getting, you know, an astronaut to the moon. But if you follow a certain recipe and you follow it to the T, you get them to the moon. Complexity is raising a teenager, right? Because there's so many independent variables at our play that are independent of each other and you just don't know what the hell is going to affect what. And you just kind of look at you, you look at them in a way where you think it's normal, but they look at you going, what the hell are you looking at that for?

40:27I'm like, I didn't think I did anything wrong. And so I'm living this right now, Saad, that you are speaking to my soul right now. So that's complexity. And, you know, but to explain complexity, you know, is something where that's very challenging. And that's something that I've always really reveled in and really enjoyed. How do you find a way to break it down into its core components and explain it in a way that they really truly understand it and appreciate it? And they're not walking away scratching their heads because you just threw a whole bunch of acronyms at them and you made them feel dumb because you sounded so smart about it, but they didn't get what you were saying.

41:04That defeats the purpose. So I think that's one of the core themes there. Noetic is really a culmination of my entire life. As they say, at any given point in time, you're exactly where you're supposed to be. and I just feel that I'm exactly who I'm supposed to be, but everything that's ever happened in my entire life has led me to this moment. Keep in mind that ever since that event happened in Berlin where I crossed the border and I was questioning everything and being very aware of my surroundings, I started to go down this path of really studying esoteric philosophies, philosophies in general, quantum physics, and I came across the works of so many different people that were writing about the role that distinct plants have played in certain societies across time and culture.

41:51So you were searching for understanding the events that had happened to you, it sounds like. Understanding events that happened to me, but understanding more questioning the perennial questions. Why are we here? What's the purpose of life? What's the meaning of life? Because you had a near-death experience. I had a near-death experience, and I wanted to understand, again, and that was rekindled after 9-11 happened, right? And you questioned absolutely everything, right? 9-11 was so pivotal in so many different ways because all of a sudden that entire house of cars that was set up came crashing down.

42:29You never thought something like that would have happened on U.S. soil, right? And I think from an individual perspective, exactly what you described in your life, that everyday decisions people made determine their fate that day. If they were late to the office, if they didn't get on a plane in Boston because they overslept, if they went to that breakfast concert. And that so many people struggle with that. I mean, I was in New York at the time and in the area. So many people, survivors struggle with that as much as the people who perish. It's that sort of what seemed to them to be a random moment, much like your experience, trying to mentally come to terms with that has been so difficult still for so many people.

43:13No, you've hit the nail on the head. It's the ripple effects, right? People don't realize that the impact and the wave of grief and guilt that suicide survivors have to face, right? Once they lose somebody that's close to them that committed suicide, it's unbearable. It's profound. It leads them to suicide oftentimes. Yeah. Right. And they didn't they were just they had nothing to do with it, but they feel somehow responsible for it or the ripple effects were just too profound. and um so you come you you you on this journey where you're searching and and this is how the the plant when we'll we'll under i know a little bit about this part of sad's life so we'll we'll this will all make sense in a moment but it's it's amazing that you sort of picked up on that because it was only a little part of the journey you were on but somehow you recognize this is important yeah you know again like so many things that just you feel that it's just meant to be I was trying to understand consciousness and the role of consciousness.

44:20And I was looking for the answers in philosophy and religion. I was looking for it in quantum physics. And ultimately, there were a lot of this reading that pointed me towards how certain communities explored consciousness through certain plans. Right? But this is prevalent throughout. Now, the blue lotus flower shows up a lot in Egyptian hieroglyphics and etchings. The Syrian root was very prominent in Mesopotamia, a very strong psychoactive component to it. The first ever rendition of anything written in Western literature is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written on Centumerian tablets, talked about a plant that grows at the bottom of the river that gives you immortality.

45:05The soma was the first mention of this sort of a plant that was written in the Rig Vedas at least 6 ,000 to 8 ,000 years ago. And that's all of the subcontinent, which is India, Sri Lanka, that whole area. And we still don't really know what the soma is. Some people say it's a mushroom. Some people say it's a plant. But again, it gave you immortality. So you look across Siberia. It was the Amanita muscaria. That's the red mushrooms with the white spots on it, right? Very famous. You see that in every Disney cartoon almost. And again, that is a very strong psychoactive component to it. So what was going on?

45:38Why were these being ingested? Who was ingesting them? What was the reasons behind it? And a lot of the texts suggest that it was for purposes of expanding consciousness. But it was also reserved by nobility. It was reserved by royalty. They didn't share it with the common people or the hoi polloi. They kept it for certain sort of folks. And when you, you know, and of course in the Amazon, there's ayahuasca, salvia, I mean, there's so much going on in West Africa. There is ibogaine, iboga, and the Dogon tribe used to use it to commune with their ancestors. So there's different reasons and rationales for it, but they have a lot of similar traits.

46:22And this was shown by way of cave art that they found in Australia, South Africa, and Europe. Like Australia, South Africa. All over the place. Right. But they're all 25 ,000 to 50 ,000 years old. But when you compare the cave art, they're so incredibly similar. They show chimeras and therianthropes. They show these geometric patterns and hand patterns. And they show eyes. And they're like, did the same person from Australia go to South Africa and then did this and they had an exhibition perhaps in Europe? No, right? So why is that? And that was intriguing to me. And there's a beautiful book written.

47:01It's called The Visionary by Graham Hancock, which is a real turning point for me because I ultimately befriended him and got to know him and had a discussion about this with him and said, why is this? Is it because it's something that's in our consciousness and we're all tapping into it? or is it that we all see distinct things regardless of our cultural background, heritage, ethnicity, whatnot? We're seeing the same things and it comes in certain waves and patterns. Now, I had never done any of this stuff or I'd never dabbled in it. I'd never taken it, never ingested a mushroom, nothing. This is like, I'm imagining this is the banker fund manager that we can hear fell deep down the rabbit hole when you find this.

47:42Because you can tell from your enthusiasm and all the research you've done that you've locked on this now and you're on to something. You know, I blame Australia and I'll tell you why. I had to travel to Australia from Toronto and had to go to Melbourne, right? Because that's where VFMC and that's where Future Fund, all those guys are there. And that damn trek took me 27 hours. Okay. So it's like coming out of solitary confinement when you disembark and you find yourself. Like, I know who I am. But I had a lot of time to read on that. You can only watch so many movies. And so I took a lot of those books with me.

48:22And I had a lot of time to read. And this is where I figured out, wow, this is something that needs to be looked into a lot more. And there were a lot of Harvard professors that had written about this. Carl Rook had written about it. Timothy Leary was sort of on to it. But it was a fascinating time for me because I was learning a lot about this. And ultimately, I befriended Graham. And I said, can I talk to you about it? And we became friends. And then he said, look, have you ever tried this? I'm like, no, no, no. He's like, well, why don't you come down to Brazil with me? I'm like, oh, who's going?

48:56And he's like, well, we're going to go and study the ways of the Shipibo tribe. And there's going to be Professor Michael Winkleman there. And there's going to be Professor Luis Eduardo Luna there. And you'll really enjoy it. and I convinced my wife that I should go to this, and I went down and I spent two years. I think this is where the manifesting generator comes in, right? Like, I've got to do it. I've got to do it. I've got to do it. I felt that it was a very strong calling, but also to be around these luminaries, Luis Eduardo Luna and Michael Winkleman and Graham there too, and really learn from them and truly understand the role that these medicines have played across time and culture was just profound.

49:34But also to now understand the ways of this tribe, the Shipibo tribe, I just couldn't give up that opportunity. So that's what I did. At the age of 38 or 39, it was in the year 2009, I went down to Brazil. I told the guys that I'm taking two weeks off. They're like, where are you going? Can't tell you, really. I mentioned this to Warren Wright, who's my current business partner and the co-founder at Noetic. But this is really the beginning of noetic, I feel. And in 2009, I went down, spent two weeks there, and had five distinct ceremonies with a plant medicine called ayahuasca. Never having taken any psychedelic before in my life, for that matter, any other substance.

50:22And it was a profound experience would be a hell of an understatement. an experience that's hard to find words for? You know, people say, well, what did you see? What did you experience? And I go, I can't explain it because I don't think my imagination has the vocabulary to be able to explain it to you. But what I can explain is the essence that you get from it. And it's almost like you've been looking out at the world from a dirty window. And somebody comes along and takes a squeegee and cleans that window for you. And now you're able to see the world in a very different way. That was my experience.

51:05I have to say that that is not typical either. I mean, people will have very different experiences, and a lot of people have a very difficult experience with this. That's why these are incredibly powerful molecules, and they need to be respected, they need to be revered, they need to be approached with reverence, and there's a lot of preparation that goes into it, tremendous amount of preparation. For a month in advance, you can't eat red meat. You've got to cut out all salt. You can't eat, you cannot have any refined sugar. You've got to stick to vegetables. The raw, the better, right? And also you have to sort of just get your frame of mind properly set for it.

51:49And then, of course, during the experience itself, it's incredibly taxing. So people go, why do it? Why go through that exercise? because you're purging a great deal from all ends. You're purging. It's a long, drawn-out purging exercise, and you're crying a lot. And it's one of those monumental experiences, but at the same time, it's not something that you want to rush back into. Right. So it was transformational. Did you come away feeling healed, feeling a new sense of knowledge, a new sense of direction? I came away without having any fear of death any longer because to me it was made very clear to me based on what I had experienced that this cycle never ends really this game never ends energy transfers it doesn't die and so you're constantly evolving you're not evolving asad or maggie you're evolving as the core essence of the fabric of the universe and existence itself and so without getting too woo-woo on everybody on this session.

52:54It is a very personalized experience, of course, but for me, the downloads were the debt should not be feared. Which is a huge thing to overcome for you, given what you had been through. Precisely. Precisely. Precisely. So you have this very, very profound experience of metamorphosis. I mean, we don't have any good words for it because it was so big in your life, but you then choose to make this your business as well. Why? At that time, obviously, there was no business idea behind this, but I just came back and the first person that I really spoke to about this was Warren, Warren Wright. Warren was the chief investment officer at DGAM and soon to be Carlisle Liquid Markets Group.

53:45And Warren was the only one, And Warren and I traveled a lot together and we shared a common interest in all of this. So when I shared it with him, we both went down this rabbit hole of researching and studying it more. You know, we got in touch with the professors that had been talking about this and working with this at Johns Hopkins, at Harvard and Imperial College in London, at the University of California, San Diego, University of California, Los Angeles. I mean, they were Basel University in Switzerland. You know, we were just going, wow, what is this? Why don't more people know about this?

54:18But what's the mechanism of action? What's actually happening? What are the molecules in there that are behaving in the manner that they are? And where are they going in the brain? What are they triggering? Why is it that you've got so many people that have got about 100 years, more than 100 years of anecdotal evidence that clearly suggests that there are profound benefits to this if it's done in the right way? Therapeutic benefits. Profoundly, right? And so what's actually going on? And so from 2009, when I had this experience, for the next five, eight years, that's what the research and the study was all about.

54:52When Cubed, which is the Quant Equity Fund, we closed that down in 2017. And I was advising a few players in the market, the larger private equity firms and some of the venture firms. We started to see in 2018 that a market was developing where there was an opportunity to put private funding towards research and actual commercialization of certain plant -based entheogens, as they call them, psychedelics. There was Sage Therapeutics. There was Atai Life Sciences. That's Christian Angermeyer's company and his work, Compass Pathways. and we called up some of the folks that we knew in the industry through my hedge fund days that were running$60 billion credit shops that had invested in this to go, why are you investing in it?

55:46And they said, well, this is where we think the future is going and this is why we think it's going to be profound. And it's low toxicity, it's highly efficacious and it'll ultimately get through FDA and DEA but there are risks of course. So Warren and I decided to just put our own money to work and put it in And then friends and family started to find out and said, well, can you take our money? And I was like, well, I guess we have to set up a fund. And I always liked the word noetic because that's sort of what kind of describes my philosophy and approach, which is, you know, everything to do with the intellect and your experiences as a human, the noetic qualities.

56:24And so we set up noetic in February of 2020. We opened the fund up. We created a fund and opened it up for others to come in. And that was the beginning of the Noetic Fund. We ended up making 24 investments in the first fund. We raised$35 million,$33 million for fund number one. We looked at 1 ,000 companies. And we're looking specifically at very science-backed. So what Noetic does is Noetic is a fund that is focused on the central nervous system. We are not a psychedelic fund. We're a fund that is focused on central nervous system or mental health. And we're looking at very science-backed opportunities that have a strong IP.

57:10IP is important intellectual property because that allows it to be scalable and accessible and to be rolled out. We're looking at, you know, very research-driven, science-backed, non-CPG, non-consumer-packaged good approach to actually looking at curing these ailments as opposed to just treating the symptoms. And there's just a tremendous amount of research out there that suggests that many of what's going on in psychedelic drug development is important. But there are other areas that are important to us too, like magnetic resonance technology, medical devices, digital therapeutics, vagus nerve stimulation.

57:44There's a lot going on in this space. It's a renaissance theory for neuroscience. Which is tremendous. It's interesting that, so we talked about this being the best and worst. Let's cover the worst part because it's as we've been hearing more and more about it. So you went down the rabbit hole well before it popped up on the radar, but there was this sort of wave. We've all seen the reports on television about, you know, the benefits of this, curing addiction, working with people who have suicidal thoughts of, you know, people were really therapy resistant. So there's been a lot of buzz, but it's been a tough market, hasn't it?

58:27It's been a it's been a difficult market in terms of the sort of investment climate around this. Why is that? And what have you seen? it's been a difficult market because there was a lot of hype initially yeah that hype was on the back of what happened in cannabis and you had a lot of cannabis investors that came onto the scene to say hey listen the people that went in that the investors that got into cannabis early in the game did really really well and so here psychedelics comes along it's kind of like cannabis which it isn't like it's just apples and oranges man it's just you cannot be so you know But there was that sentiment.

59:05And these hype-driven investors didn't want to lose out, and they had FOMO. And so they got in. The public markets were quite receptive to this. A lot of these companies were looking to list on the public exchange. And there's 80 publicly traded stocks between Canada, the US, and Europe that are in psychedelics. And so that hype really kind of drove up valuations, prices, and all of that ultimately came crashing down. Now, we were, of course, involved in a lot of those trades where we only invest in private companies and some of them went public. But we exited most of those positions at a time that suited us because we didn't think that how the public markets were valuing these really biotech pharma plays made any sense.

59:55There was no revenue. They had a long path. You didn't know about regulators that are going to approve it. The DA was still on the sideline. And there was a lot of assumptions made. And all of a sudden, you're seeing these companies well over a billion. No, no, that doesn't make any sense. So we did well for our portfolio, of course, but then we went into the slump. The last year and a half, you know, it's now we're coming out of it for sure. But it was a very, very, very difficult period of time. especially in light of the macro headwinds that we've been facing. And you're in VC and everybody's looking for liquidity to put money to work in a VC opportunity that has a long tail to it.

1:00:36You're going to go, no, that's not my first choice. And it's like, OK, well, you know, so it's been it's been incredibly challenging that way. But and then also to work with your portfolio companies that are constantly in need of raising more and more money in this environment. right and they're money good they're good companies that are doing well they're generating they're showing results but it's been so difficult to raise money for them that that's been the real challenge this has been the most difficult period of time in my career in capital markets in in asset management um to raise money for so unless you're specifically doing credit or if you've got an AI bent, it's not that easy.

1:01:21That's right. All the money's rushing there and it's scarce elsewhere. So yet you remain optimistic and this is why it's your best trade. Well, our fund one has done phenomenally well so far, right? So all those lessons learned from some of the past - Yes, that's right. That's right. We chose well. I think we got lucky. It was luck and timing. I kind of always try and revert back to the David Rubenstein humility of things. And so, yes, I think I just was in the right place at the right time. But, you know, we had success. So that has done well for fund number one. We've got some other events taking place in the portfolio that are going to do really well for it.

1:02:04Now we're on fund number two. But this is part and parcel of a zeitgeist movement that I have sort of identified. I feel that it's just, whether you look at cryptocurrency, whether you look at what's happening with psychedelic drug development, what's happening in the wellness space overall, what's happening with decentralization of currencies, what's happening with climate change as well. The one theme is everybody wants agency. They want to take agency. They want to take agency back. They want to say, I want to have access to a certain currency and want to do it this way. I want it to be decentralized.

1:02:45I want it to be specific to what I want and need and so on. It's about personalization. And medicine is going towards personalization. No two people are the same. You can't say, well, take this exact same dose for everybody. everybody would be no no i mean our dna our makeup a framework epigenetics plays a huge part in it our environment we're all wired differently right and it's so it's it's different strokes with different folks and we have to understand that we've got to you know personalized medicine and only then will it start to work there is no deeper or more profound example of personalized medicine than when it comes to psychedelics because you could give 50 000 people you know the exact same dosage of this medicine, and they will have 50 ,000 different experiences.

1:03:32No two people will have the same experience ever. So, you know, we're riding this wave. Within our industry in itself, wellness, it is by far the fastest growing segment in the market, number one. Number two, we have learned so much from oncology, from cancer research. And we're using that. We're putting that into and transferring that information knowledge. AI has done a profound amount of, has brought a lot to the table as well. Now we don't need to put two or three molecules together and put it in a petri dish and wait three days to watch it and see what reaction comes about. AI can tell us exactly the various permutations that will bring about different outcomes.

1:04:22And we've got 100 years of anecdotal evidence that's now finally out in terms of how it affects the certain receptors the way it does as an agonist or as an antagonist. So with all of that, the final part is we've learned more about the human brain in the last five years than the other point in history. And the pandemic had a huge role to play there. Loneliness is the biggest epidemic in the U.S. The U.S. Surgeon General just went around. The whole U.S. came back and said, we missed the boat. It's not COVID or anything else. It's loneliness. Loneliness leads to inflammatory-related ailments, right?

1:04:53Then it leads to trauma, big T, small T trauma, then leads to inflammatory-related ailments. I mean, it's got physiological factors that it results in, but people don't realize. If you're depressed over a long period of time, it's going to lead to inflammatory-related ailments, autoimmune disorders, cancer, and so on. And how is it that there's a country with all the technological investment we have that we're getting lonelier every day? We don't have community. We're not able to share a lot more. Everybody's involved in their screens. And now for the next generation, you've got teenagers. I've got an 18-year-old and a 23-year-old.

1:05:27And I've seen how they've grown up with these devices. Every time that phone dings or blings, it's a dopamine trigger because you've got to look at it. And so it's a dopamine response. Now, if you're growing up with these instruments, you're wired to be looking out for these dopamine triggers and dopamine responses. That's not healthy at all because when you don't get that, when you don't get the like, the validation, the thumbs up, whatever, you get upset, you get angry, you get moody, and it starts to bother you, and that affects your mental health. So mental health is mental wealth. There's going to be ups and downs here.

1:06:04I think that with the market coming back the way it is, private markets are looking at this very seriously. FDA has certainly shown over the last five, six years that many of these molecules in psychedelics are breakthrough designation, BTD status. So all moving in the right direction, Maggie. And I think that this is a long game, but it's like being an oncology very early in the game. And there's no doubt that we're going to see cures for many of these ailments over the next two years. Absolutely no doubt. One thing that strikes me when I hear you talk about it, and we were at an RV event, which is where we met, and there were others who were slightly different avenues, but along the same thing.

1:06:47I don't think anyone in finance is having as much fun or is as passionate as you all are. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. You know, I don't see that as much. We're very passionate about it. And I'll tell you one of the biggest reasons. I have two daughters, age 23 and 18. And between the two of them, at this point in their life, they've known five individuals in their ecosystem that have committed suicide. now how how is that right in any way i'm 51 i know one individual in my life that has committed suicide a very dear we are experiencing a similar situation here and you we live in completely different places but this we had the same conversation my children have known more people either their peers or parents that have committed they've been to more funerals of people that have committed suicide than I have known in my life.

1:07:38It's extraordinary. That's right. And that is not just specific to your family or my family. That is happening across the board. And that doesn't make any sense to me. And so the first thing we need to do is talk about mental health. The first thing we need to do is talk about how this is impacting everybody and what's really behind it. And then we need to start talking about all the ways in which we can actually cure this, not treat it. And believe me, SSRIs have been a huge disappointment and all the big pharma companies know that. But now we're forcing their hand into looking down a pathway.

1:08:17But by the way, they're very interested in now, right? Before they weren't. It's an epidemic. It is. And where there's an epidemic, there's an opportunity. Yeah. Saad, I'm so inspired by your passion every time we talk. Little did I know that there is an amazing life story behind it too. It has been so much fun. We went a little long, but it was worth it. It's been so, so amazing to catch up. You have a lot of wisdom to share. Oh, no, you've been very kind and it's always a pleasure. Thank you very much for the opportunity, Maggie. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

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