[00:00:20] Raad Seraj: Today, my guest is Maria Velkova. Maria is the managing partner of Tabula Rasa Ventures, an acceleration fund focused on the blind spots of this healthcare industry, starting with psychedelic therapeutics. Maria was named top 15 global psychedelics executive by Business Insider, and she's the board member of Benzinga Psychedelic Advisory Council.

[00:00:37] Raad Seraj: In May 2022, she co founded the first ever medical psychedelics House of Davos at the World Economic Forum. Maria's expertise bridges the silos in drug development and spans across R& D, clinical trial design, as well as M&A.

[00:00:49] Raad Seraj: Maria, thanks so much for being here.

[00:00:51] Maria Velkova: It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. 

[00:00:54] Raad Seraj: Being somebody who grew up in the Middle East, grew up in Saudi Arabia for 14 years, the fact that you guys did a conference on the medical applications of psychedelics in Dubai blew me away. I'm like, either I've been under a rock for a long time, which I seldom am, something must be happening.

[00:01:10] Raad Seraj: That's really interesting. How did that come about? And I say this, particularly for people who may not know, for a lot of the world, psychosis is still considered a drug, a narcotic. And in many parts of the Arab world, including Dubai and Saudi Arabia, drugs are punishable by death. So I'm curious, there must be something really interesting either happening on the ground or there must be an opening that you guys saw.

[00:01:31] Raad Seraj: How did the conference in Dubai happen? What was the experience like and why did you decide to do something in Dubai?

[00:01:37] Maria Velkova: Yes. Honestly, I was blown away myself, even while I was at the conference on a panel speaking about this. I always joke with my business partner, Marie Kazan. I'm like, if it doesn't feel slightly, we might get arrested. It's not big enough. Yes, that was a, that was an experience, a really incredible experience, actually.

[00:01:58] Maria Velkova: But I also. And so sometimes do we actually really just do that? Yeah we like doing big things. And Dubai was our most recent really big thing. And yeah, how did that come about? I guess I will take us a year back, We also, as well, as you mentioned in, in my summary brought psychedelics to the global stage alongside the World Economic Forum where we also felt like, oh my gosh, will we get arrested for this distilling information?

[00:02:31] Maria Velkova: Will we be misunderstood? However, in both instances, we brought leading global experts to really speak to the medical application of these substances and really to educate the medical community and our global leaders on what the potential is here with the hopes of Working a little bit on the stigma that has been calcitating over many decades since the 70s since the war on drugs was was announced.

[00:02:59] Maria Velkova: I have a colorful life and have lived in several different places in my life. When I was living in London, I actually, most of my friends were from the Middle East, and a lot of them were expats based in Dubai. So I already had some networks there. When we were at Davos last year actually one of the Ministers of Saudi came into the psychedelic house at Davos, at which point I thought, is this gentleman lost? However, we got into a conversation that really piqued my imagination. What he said was he's been following the space and because this is going through proper legal pathways to medicalize, collect the right data and commercialize just like any other drug development firm. Psychedelics are viewed slightly differently.

[00:03:49] Maria Velkova: And of course, we have Spravato, which is already FDA approved, which was also laying the initial Stepstones for the rest of the space to really emerge and a really important milestone for this therapeutic space and novel, I call them novel ancient technologies. So this novel, novel ancient therapeutic class.

[00:04:10] Maria Velkova: And I started thinking I started having calls with several friends. Honestly, most of them said you're crazy. This is definitely a no go. A lot of sarcasm as well. But as I kept on connecting with people, more and more people, Marieke and I decided, okay, we're halfway. We were in, in that was this year for the medical the house of health.

[00:04:31] Maria Velkova: And I was like, we're halfway around almost there. Let's just go and check it out. Let's just go and have a few meetings and see what happens. And so again, There were a lot of sarcastic individuals and individuals who, fairly enough, are in disbelief. But we kept on meeting more and more people, and they actually started sharing that, many high level individuals and individuals who are living there, also Emiratis, especially the individuals who went to university, for example, in the U.S. They're very open minded, and they have been following the developments in the space now, in terms of anything happening locally, there were ways away for sure. But this was a very important first step. Now, I wondered what is happening with bravado since his FDA approved. And since the Saudi minister mentioned that if it's FDA approved, we're talking about a very different game.

[00:05:24] Maria Velkova: And so I started researching to see which hospitals and medical facilities were using Spravato. And honestly, in my search, I only saw the American hospital that is using Spravato. I found out the doctor who is prescribing Spravato, and I just called him and asked him to grab a coffee. Interestingly enough, and aside, by the way, this you can cut out.

[00:05:48] Maria Velkova: I don't want to share the name. Just think I can't because it's fine. But anyway, okay, going back to it. Interestingly enough Joseph Dr. Joseph Al Khoury was planning for his second conference on mental health and even mental health is can be very stigmatized in that region of the world. But last year they did the first conference on addiction.

[00:06:07] Maria Velkova: Again, a very spicy topic for the region there. But what he was doing and planning to do in, in, in this June was a conference on mental health innovations. I did ask him if he's planning to include programming on the biggest mental health innovation that we have seen in many years, at least pharmacologically psychedelics.

[00:06:29] Maria Velkova: And he had shared that I am. I'm very happy I'm meeting you because I just don't have access to the experts, but I would really love to include that conversation in the conference and I believe it's important. And by the way, on a side the conference was sponsored by big pharma. So we're in Dubai, in the, in Dubai an Arab location speaking about medical psychedelics.

[00:06:54] Maria Velkova: In a medical conference with psychologists and psychiatrists sponsored by Big Pharma. That was just, think it was what or I don't know. But it was really incredible. We brought Professor Rachel Yahuda, who is the head of Mount Sinai Psychedelic Research Center to represent the scientific community and knowledge.

[00:07:12] Maria Velkova: And also we brought Jesse Gould to really speak from the veteran slash patient slash nonprofit perspective. And during the conference, it was so well received. Not only by the audience, but also by representatives of the Abu Dhabi Department of Health, with which I had the ultimate pleasure of sitting on a panel with and discussing this.

[00:07:33] Maria Velkova: Professor Rachel Yehuda delivered an incredibly well rounded, holistic, and realistic view of the space, not shying away from also speaking about the hippie movement, at which point I was grabbing to the edge of my seat, looking around, is the police going to break into the door and arrest us all? But also, incredible potential of benefits that these medicines can deliver, but also some of the data that's still lacking.

[00:08:01] Maria Velkova: And I really appreciated that. And not only I and Rachel is one of, one of the few people who is really sober about also the challenges and it's not blindsided by the incredible potential. So the audience really appreciated that. They were really excited. And another thing I would love to mention is that also on the panel, the last question from the audience, the panel with the Abu Dhabi Health Ministry, was the elephant in the room about religion, at which point I also looked around and was like, Oh, my God, why would you ask that?

[00:08:33] Maria Velkova: But this was the local psychiatrist. At which point I was just so humbled by the answer that the representative from the health ministry gave and He said that he reasoned he's a deep has deep devotion to the scriptures But also in the scriptures, it says that if something can be used for healing that is not considered haram I'm not Quoting him word by word, but this is someone who has a PhD and a postdoc, maybe actually two postdocs.

[00:09:03] Maria Velkova: And his point was, if we don't stop if we don't, if we don't, if we don't stand on the edge of innovation, on top of innovation, in healthcare, Our people will leave and go find the latest innovation in health care elsewhere, and for the region that is the worst thing that can happen. They actually want to attract even more talent from abroad.

[00:09:25] Maria Velkova: They have incredible incentives and also an incredible offering to attract people there. And another thing which humbled me is the fact that They know what they don't know, and they're not pretending to know it. They are open and vulnerable to asking for help. And I don't see, I haven't seen that on a high level scale in many other countries or many other communities, and it's incredibly humbling that, they know what they're really good at, but they also know what they need help with, and they're not afraid of asking for it. The culmination of this conference Marieke and I got invited to the Abu Dhabi Department of Health, where we had the pleasure of sitting in a conference room with about 16, 17 different representatives that work on various ways in the healthcare space locally.

[00:10:14] Maria Velkova: Their enthusiasm was, again, humbling. I don't want to give away too much because we're in very early discussions, but we very much intend to Be shepherds and also educators to provide the right level of information to the local talent there to see if there's maybe a potential to bring this kind of innovation locally there.

[00:10:34] Raad Seraj: That's amazing. I think there's so many follow up questions I have about that, the whole process of convincing them or assessing the openness you have there really boils down to how a lot of the world works, right? You have, you need one champion inside who will say, Yes, we are listening, we're paying attention, we're curious, will you help us?

[00:10:53] Raad Seraj: And then everything rolls from there, it snowballs from there, it's pretty amazing. What do you think you mentioned there's a, there were the doctor I forgot their name that you mentioned. They were already thinking about a conference on mental health and addiction. Two are, two things that are very taboo.

[00:11:09] Raad Seraj: In anywhere in the world, but perhaps more so in the Arab world. How do you think the the folks in the UAE and Abu Dhabi and Dubai, how do you think they see mental health and addiction in their own population? 

[00:11:24] Maria Velkova: In full transparency, I don't think I can answer that question, but I can answer it in a way from what I've seen. There is the simplest and most obvious way in which you can see what your own eyes is that. There is a lot of smoking in the Middle East and tobacco consumption is massive. It's there.

[00:11:41] Maria Velkova: Addiction is there. To reference that. In terms of how they view it we're in the early days of shaping that perspective and really educating ourselves without making assumptions. So one thing I would say is that they are starting to really look into it and really understanding mental health.

[00:12:00] Maria Velkova: But I must also say that it is in the very beginning processes, but you got to start somewhere, right? There's always a first step and the first person that needs to take that first step. I don't No, and I can't say how fast anything around mental health and mental health treatments can get rolled out there.

[00:12:20] Maria Velkova: Obviously, antidepressants are used. There are clinics. Most of the doctors are shying away from using Spravato, actually. But there are individuals who really want to champion this. And from the conference, we met a lot of incredible psychiatrists. And psychologists who want to be champions of this and who want to form a coalition and figure out, what are the right steps and the right pace of steps to allow for that kind of innovation and treatment in the Middle East,

[00:12:50] Raad Seraj: Totally. And one thing,

[00:12:52] Maria Velkova: Dubai.

[00:12:52] Raad Seraj: And one thing, and you alluded to this, to remember, there is a disadvantage to having the pressure of legacy policymaking and regulations, right? There's too much inertia. A lot of the East, in places like Dubai and India and Singapore, they have the benefit of starting from fresh starting from scratch.

[00:13:12] Raad Seraj: Yeah, exactly. Starting from scratch. And so there's no burden of legacy decision making, and the sort of organizational or national level inertia that exists and decision making is so complex and there's so many layers of bureaucracy, it helps to have a top down approach that can start from scratch, that can learn from the lessons around the world and decide what makes sense for them.

[00:13:35] Raad Seraj: So there's something to be said about that. I want to take a step back and go back, go to how you grew up, because I think that will inform the person you are and why you feel compelled to push the envelope. and challenge the conventions, right? So again, to your point, both about doing things in both Davos and Dubai speaks to like how you and Marek approach the work you're doing.

[00:13:56] Raad Seraj: You grew up in a small mountain town in Bulgaria. Tell me how you grew up. What was that like? What were your parents up to? And then what made you guys immigrate to the U. S.?

[00:14:06] Maria Velkova: Absolutely. Yes. My small little town is called Velingrad. And it's around 14, 000 population. Actually very sadly Bulgaria has the fastest population decline in the European Union. So I haven't looked at the latest numbers, but it's small. It's not tiny, but it's small. It was the most beautiful childhood.

[00:14:25] Maria Velkova: Honestly we run around in the woods and forest and feel safe. The scary monsters of the developed Western world were not in my little hometown. It's also known as the SPA capital of the Balkan Peninsula. There's 98 mineral springs with different mineral content and temperatures, and a lot of people go there for healing.

[00:14:50] Maria Velkova: There's actually a lot of impressive individuals that come from this small town in Bulgaria. So I had a beautiful childhood. In terms of growing up, my parents grew up during communism and it was felt a little bit less in the smaller cities and towns. It was the soviet times.

[00:15:09] Maria Velkova: So despite that though, For example, both of my grandmother and father had underground businesses during those times. Both of them were entrepreneurs by spirit. So I'm not very shocked that me and my sister are also entrepreneurs. Yeah. My, my grandmother grew up with her nine brothers and sisters, mom and dad in a single room house.

[00:15:32] Maria Velkova: They had to They had to grow the food and produce the food that they had to eat. That trickled into my childhood as well. Every winter we would pickle vegetables, or before winter we would, end of summer, pickle vegetables. My grandma had a massive garden in her house. Has always grown her own produce.

[00:15:51] Maria Velkova: We actually took that piece with us my family's house in New Jersey. We have a little garden with tomatoes, cucumbers, and I really love that and I really appreciate it. And because my. generational upbringing has grew up with very little that conservation of resources and really being mindful and present to, not throwing out food or saving stuff and being just conscious and not so consumerism has definitely be something, been something that I've inherited and from my grandparents, but also my parents.

[00:16:23] Maria Velkova: And I really appreciate that. So we had a beautiful life. I was born in 89 January when the Berlin wall fell. It was In the years to follow, obviously, Bulgaria was going through a process of democratization. So I definitely did feel some of the, so Soviet impacts. For example, there was only one brand of chocolate, which was Bulgarian.

[00:16:44] Maria Velkova: My dad used to bring Kinder from Germany and that was like the best thing ever. But I grew up in very happy family. My dad continued having his own business. My mom was supporting in that business as well. And in the late nineties people started applying for green cards and we weren't super wealthy, but we were really happy.

[00:17:06] Maria Velkova: And so my dad's friend started, applying for green cards and he actually did it as a joke. He, not as a joke, but he was like, okay, whatever. I'm going to fill out the application. I don't think I'll get it. But actually it was the only person that got it in 1999. And. It took a while. It took a whole year.

[00:17:23] Maria Velkova: You have a year to make the decision and come to legitimize the green card, but it took the full year for my parents to make that decision, and it was a very difficult one. They were coming to a country where none of us knew the language. We had very few, less than three relatives or people that we knew here, so they would have had to given up all of the comforts of their lives, sacrificed all of that and went into this crazy, massive New York concrete jungle where everything is different.

[00:17:52] Maria Velkova: So yes I see why that choice was very hard for them. They have indeed given up a lot for me and my sister to have the opportunities that we've had in our lives. And I cannot express my gratitude for that. But in 2000, I think it was February 2000, after the hit of the millennia we got on the boat or plane.

[00:18:15] Maria Velkova: Fresh, I actually have a photo where we arrived at JFK Airport, fresh off the boat, as they say. And our crazy journey in the West world as immigrants began at that point. 

[00:18:28] Raad Seraj: Was it just to think about the future for you and your sister? 

[00:18:31] Maria Velkova: Yes, absolutely. My parents didn't calculate any of their needs and wants in that process. When we arrived, we had 2000 as a family of four. My parents had to work four or 56 jobs sometimes, which pushed me and my sister to really become adults. Early. I was 11 years old. She was nine. Although my mom has always raised us to be very independent, even from a two years old.

[00:18:58] Maria Velkova: But yeah, we were pushed into that. And of course it was a traumatic moment for us. The culture shock has definitely rippled through my life, but also trauma. It's the way that you internalize big moments defining moments of your lives of your life but also that trauma can be channeled in a very positive way.

[00:19:20] Maria Velkova: And I think, up until I actually got into the psychedelic space, I was channeling that trauma through a negative lens. But also it has brought me really far places being very independent, being very hungry and wanting to prove myself, wanting to succeed, being very resilient and not giving up and being able to take on a lot of stress and pressure and challenges in my life.

[00:19:47] Maria Velkova: So I would never go back and change that. But it was the first years were. Quite challenging.

[00:19:53] Raad Seraj: In what ways were you challenging it negatively to your point?

[00:19:56] Maria Velkova: It wasn't always only negative, obviously. My our necks were hurting when we were walking around the city because we've never seen tall buildings, but also the diversity and people, people of color. I've never seen people of color in my life. So that was pretty shocking. I'm like an amazement ways of like how diverse the world is and like how little we knew about it.

[00:20:17] Maria Velkova: But on the negative side, which Negative turned to positive. Kids in school are really mean to me and my sister. We were ostracized. We didn't have any friends. They made fun of us. And that was really shocking to me because in my little hometown, there were no clicks or everyone's friends.

[00:20:33] Maria Velkova: But that actually sent me a little A picture of a little handwritten invitation on lined paper to my class for my birthday for my like for my like 9th or 10th birthday and said I am inviting the whole class and Miss Sophia Gioshiva, my teacher at the time, and for a present, I want leather pants. So the whole class was always invited, there was nothing as segregating or you're not cool, you're cool, you're weird, you're different, everyone was friends, but also everyone was born in that town, raised in that town, their parents were raised in that town, so I'm not judging that in a way, but it was really challenging.

[00:21:10] Maria Velkova: And what changed that, which also became like the tool that was my gift, is that I, in Bulgaria actually school is a little bit more accelerated, the curriculum. So I was extremely good at mathematics and some of the sciences that were similar. I couldn't read, I couldn't write. I had to learn that in ESL, English as a Second Language. Miss Pientel, thank you so much. But I noticed that when I was getting really good grades, people were noticing, they're like, Wow. I made the honor roll. Within the second semester of immigrating to the US. So the highest grades and also in sports. There were two schools in my town and they used to organize track meets for athletics and sports like Running and long jump.

[00:21:54] Maria Velkova: And I participated in that in the following year, moved to the next school and kids were like, Oh my God, are you the fast girl? Are you the fast girl from Clarendon school? So I was like, Oh, okay. So if I'm really good, and if I achieve things that are better than others, then I will get accepted by my community.

[00:22:11] Maria Velkova: And that got internalized as my trauma in a way that also helped me in my life and to get to where I am. So I would never change But Yeah, through the negative lens, I've had some challenges and hardships in my life because I was not doing it for a calling in life or for a purpose. I was literally doing it to just be accepted by my community.

[00:22:31] Maria Velkova: And it took many years to understand that. And once I started working on my self development, self discovery self growth is when I really started to deconstruct and dissect how those events in my life have built my lived reality of who I am today. 

[00:22:47] Raad Seraj: Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate that story. Particularly because for a lot of immigrants. And you'd be surprised how many of my podcast guests have similar experiences to you. Being immigrants, coming to a new place, we were forced to individuate early, because of who people say we are not, right?

[00:23:06] Raad Seraj: And so you identify, you build a character around that, saying that, I'm going to prove myself to show that I also deserve to belong, that I also deserve to have things my way, and so on. And a lot of that gets channeled through the only form of control you have early on, which is school, diving into books, diving into proving yourself through your mind, because that's the only thing you can change.

[00:23:27] Raad Seraj: And the interesting thing that you said, turning the negative to the positive is the part where you start to individuate again, but on your own terms to say, this is who I want to be, not just because of what people say I should be or shouldn't be, right? I think that's really an important that's a common factor I find in a lot of immigrants, a lot of leaders who all have, who have backgrounds being immigrants and so on.

[00:23:48] Maria Velkova: Very well said. And I will double down on. Community and belonging, it's crucial for balanced health, mental, physical, also for longevity. Dan Butner is the founder, the guy who found the blue zones of the world and community in every single blue zone where you have the people that are living the longest, healthiest lives.

[00:24:08] Maria Velkova: community and family was absolutely pivotal for that in a pivotal ingredient. And if you even think about like thousands of years back, that's the underpinnings

[00:24:19] Maria Velkova: homo sapiens and what we are today, gathering around the fire, belonging to a group and really being accepted. So I think that's incredible.

[00:24:28] Maria Velkova: And Yeah, absolutely. It can drive you to do crazy things when you don't belong. And the sad part is that the world loneliness today is epidemic numbers. People don't feel like they belong. And communities getting really broken up and globalized. My, my friend, my community is global. But when on a daily basis, you don't have your core community that you meet up every time for tea and continuously You know live your lives together.

[00:24:56] Maria Velkova: It's challenging. It's challenging and a lot of people are feeling the

[00:24:59] Raad Seraj: Totally. And, this particular point is really important for immigrants to understand and embody because I frequently joke that the immigrant ethos is work hard, but if you're happy, you're not working hard enough. We're not,

[00:25:12] Maria Velkova: my gosh.

[00:25:13] Raad Seraj: we know how to work hard, but we don't know how to be happy. And I think

[00:25:15] Maria Velkova: life is about suffering.

[00:25:17] Raad Seraj: You have to suffer, constantly suffer. If you're not angry, if you're not going and getting something and always, trying to survive, you don't always have to survive. Look, livelihood and financial security is very important, of course, but the whole point is to be free.

[00:25:30] Raad Seraj: After a certain point, if you're not, if you're caged to the same idea of survival, then you're not free, it's such an important thing and I appreciate you sharing that story. I want to move. In the same sort of line of thinking and life experience and arc of your story, I want to talk a little bit about your experience at Cambridge, which is an elite school, people from around the world.

[00:25:50] Raad Seraj: And I frequently found that my friends who are Rhodes Scholars and so on have gone to Cambridge or Oxford and so on from, let's say, background, immigrant backgrounds, people who grew up, but not much. When they go to these schools, there's a very, there's a big crisis of identity. It's like, where do you fit?

[00:26:06] Raad Seraj: I wonder what your experience was. I would love to hear a little bit about that.

[00:26:09] Maria Velkova: You had the nail on the head. Actually, I wanted to mention that a little bit ago, in in high school and in, in formative school, I'm not fit into anything because I was the nerd that was in the science and mathematics academy the only female with seven other, seven other students who are male.

[00:26:24] Maria Velkova: But my friends were the high school dropout, garage bands, music radicals, and counterculture people. And then, in terms of even the way I dressed, I was dressing in a very European style, whereas my friends were wearing pajama pants to school, which I would never do. But definitely identity crisis, oh my gosh I feel that a little bit Today as well, definitely in my corporate career psychedelic space is much more diverse but even in that space, and I think diversity should be really celebrated, but also in order to function in the world, there has to be some sort of guidelines commonalities, again, if you look at Yuval Harari's books he writes that what makes something real is if enough people believe in it, unless it's natural.

[00:27:08] Maria Velkova: But if you don't and I noticed this, when I go into rooms with everyone wearing suit and ties And if i'm not wearing a suit and tie or if i'm dressed a little bit differently that kind of creates a barrier To initiate conversation because the way we carry ourselves really signals like, Oh, it's one of my people.

[00:27:28] Maria Velkova: Okay. I can talk to you about this, about that. So if I'm wearing a hat, which I love wearing hats in an investor room, yeah. People are a little bit thrown off. They don't know how to place me, but not only that, it goes to even more. Not to that level of extent as wearing a hat and glitter, let's say. I don't wear glitter and there's a certain setting for that, but not in the investor rooms.

[00:27:50] Maria Velkova: But even being a female in a room many times, a lot of females in finance are the only or the very few females in rooms. And I experienced that all the time. It's not such a block, but again, even that is, is like a little bit I've noticed but going back to Cambridge yeah, you know what I, my, my partner, my boyfriend at the time had to literally bend my arm for me to apply because I actually didn't think I was good enough to be accepted there.

[00:28:18] Maria Velkova: Again because of my immigrant experience and what you mentioned, like the suffering if you're feeling happy and at peace and that you're good enough, it's like there's something wrong with that, which is crazy. I've always strived to improve, to better myself, to grow.

[00:28:33] Maria Velkova: I was accepted into a program that's called Masters in Bioscience Enterprise at Cambridge which is an MBA for life sciences. Basically, what does it take to take a drug from research, the lab bench, to the patient bedside. And I was one of 23 accepted individuals, small program. The beauty of the program, which I Really appreciate it and that's why it makes it so incredible is that they try to have One student from at least each continent and as many countries as possible.

[00:29:06] Maria Velkova: So That was an incredibly beautiful program, and I really loved my time at Cambridge, not because it's Cambridge, and it's pretty much like Harry Potter. We have formals with the long tables, we wear our black coats, whatever they're called, I forget what they're called.

[00:29:23] Raad Seraj: basically.

[00:29:24] Maria Velkova: Yeah, exactly. And I love that. I love the culture there.

[00:29:27] Maria Velkova: It was so beautiful. But what was also really beautiful is that I feel like my self transformation really kicked off there. And not only in my personal transformation, but also I found the love of my life and what I want to do with my life in terms of career. 

[00:29:45] Raad Seraj: What was it about that place that allowed you to feel that purpose?

[00:29:49] Maria Velkova: Yeah. This is true in general. I have a lot of energy but because I was channeling it through the hurt culture shock immigrant lens, initially all my co colleagues wanted to really hang out with me and get to know me just like everyone else. But then they stopped inviting me to stuff, and I spoke to one of them who was like my close friend.

[00:30:11] Maria Velkova: I was like, I don't understand. What have I done? Like, why am I being excluded? And he was like. Do you know how intense you are? Basically, when they would invite me to the pub and to go get a pint or do something that is not school, I would always say, oh, I'm sorry, we have this coursework. I have to work on it.

[00:30:29] Maria Velkova: Make sure you don't, please, you guys don't enjoy, but make sure you don't go home too late because, we're in a group team and we have work to do. I was so obsessed with the schoolwork, again, my old little Maria in school, the, in, in the fifth grade, that's what got me, to be accepted.

[00:30:46] Maria Velkova: It's this very same thing that got me rejected. And I really started thinking about that deeply. And it's really interesting because this is very true of a lot of our blind spots and crutches. It's almost the reverse. So if you're trying really hard to be liked, you're trying so hard that it has the opposite effect.

[00:31:06] Maria Velkova: Or if you're trying to be successful so hard for the success of it, it sometimes has the opposite effect. I, and I've taught, I've talked to my executive coach slash therapist in a way. And I and she's helped me really process a lot of that and realize, I'm so hardworking that it's reflecting the opposite way.

[00:31:25] Maria Velkova: Cause I'm doing too much, and I'm not seeing stuff around me. So that was a really big awakening moments. The first one where I was like, Oh my God, wow. And I approached it because I really love my colleagues. I was so honored. to be in this institution with these incredible people, super diverse people.

[00:31:44] Maria Velkova: And instead of being like that's not true or, denying it. I was like, okay, I guess I got to sit in meditation for a little bit here. That's before I've ever done meditation in my life. But that was a really incredible moment, which really opened my eyes to myself. The first time that I woke up to myself And how my actions are actually reflecting into the world.

[00:32:06] Raad Seraj: To your point, I think no matter how you show up, it's, whether people recognize it or not. I think when you're being inauthentic, as in you're not showing all of you, that's what people get turned off by. I myself have reflected on this myself, the way I've grown up in so many different parts of the world.

[00:32:21] Raad Seraj: There's so many different situations I've always found. I'm curious about what's behind the obvious. And it doesn't allow for small talk. I can do small talk really well, but I just fucking hate it.

[00:32:34] Maria Velkova: Me too.

[00:32:35] Raad Seraj: When you want to talk about the really juicy stuff, when you talk about the really good stuff, I feel like it, not everybody's always keen to do that, right?

[00:32:43] Raad Seraj: And I get it. I get it. Sometimes you have to ease into it through small talk, but I always know yeah, and I found that's why I gravitate towards arts a lot because the arts allows you to express or at least perceive or see things that are. Abstract that you, it's hard to put words behind.

[00:32:59] Raad Seraj: And of course, as your emotional bandwidth broadens, your vocabulary are also broadens with that. And so you can express those nuances a lot more, but to your point, when you're still the ghosts and the phantom of the immigrant life and growing up in somewhere you don't belong. It's when it has hold on you, it's very difficult to describe who you really are or show people who you are.

[00:33:20] Maria Velkova: Yeah, totally. And, that exercise of ticking the boxes. Best grades, best university, best career, this much money, this kind of relationships, these kind of friends, these kind of places to be seen. Honestly, I was doing all that. And that's like after Cambridge, I moved to London and that's where I began my, the first initial steps of my career.

[00:33:41] Maria Velkova: I was doing all of that. I had everything that I ever wanted. I achieved, and I felt a massive black hole right in the middle of my gut. And I was actually, In, again, immigrant life, what? Depression? Sadness? What are you talking about? Stop complaining.

[00:34:00] Raad Seraj: Nobody's got time for this.

[00:34:01] Maria Velkova: Yeah, exactly. It's oh my gosh, my mom still says to me, I'm slowly working on her, but she's yeah, if you keep on talking about being depressed, you will be depressed.

[00:34:09] Maria Velkova: There's some truth to that. But, also, denying your feelings and feeling your feelings, that has massive damaging effects. I was, all the boxes were ticked and I was feeling not great. I can now in hindsight say I, I was going through a massive depression. I wouldn't define it in the standard symptomology and like how I, I didn't close myself in.

[00:34:35] Maria Velkova: I actually went even more. I wanted to be extremely successful in my career, but also that was the first time I was living in a very big city. As an adult making my own salary and I went pedal to the metal on both. I was sleeping three to four hours many days on end because I was going super hard on career, but also my social life, because I was like, my whole life is not going to be just career.

[00:35:00] Maria Velkova: I will also go into the arts into the creative stuff, into the music, into the color. But when you're working in. In, in a corporate setting especially, for example banking, or consulting, or legal they have this, you're plugged in, and they'll suck everything from you that you can give them.

[00:35:17] Maria Velkova: Literally, there's a statement, up or out. What? So that work ethic and that hunger to be accepted and to be seen through my hard work, my crutch, which really brought me very far, but also it was not healthy at all. So I love that you said about arts and it's important to balance both the left and the right side of the brain.

[00:35:42] Maria Velkova: And I'm not only an investor and I don't only do that, actually my Very big passion and hobby is theatrical costume design.

[00:35:51] Raad Seraj: Which you're phenomenal at. I see your Instagram and all the stuff you were at Burning Man. I'm like, yep. You're clearly have a knack for this.

[00:35:59] Maria Velkova: Thank you, Grandma Maria Volkova, her name was as well. But her underground business was a tailor doing communism that I mentioned.

[00:36:06] Raad Seraj: Oh 

[00:36:06] Maria Velkova: she had an underground, yeah, she would smuggle Vogue magazines from Paris and Germany and make beautiful garments for people secretly. Obviously because you couldn't have your own business.

[00:36:17] Maria Velkova: Yep,

[00:36:17] Raad Seraj: It all comes full

[00:36:18] Maria Velkova: definitely have a lot of influence from her.

[00:36:20] Raad Seraj: So this is actually a good segue to talk about. Your most meaningful psychedelic experience. I'm curious, where did the medicine fit in your journey? And why, what brought you to that moment?

[00:36:33] Maria Velkova: Absolutely. And since we're talking about authenticity and transparency here, I'm not afraid to say this. I know sometimes people are very careful of how they speak about how they got to the psychedelic space. But before getting to the psychedelic space my career in London was in drug development and pharmaceuticals and biotech.

[00:36:53] Maria Velkova: So I spent altogether a decade in this space but yeah, early in my career in big pharma, I noticed that there's massive silos because most people that go into these into these corporations, they are climbing a ladder and they are salary and a success depends on how good they are and what they do.

[00:37:13] Maria Velkova: If you start new things every single time over and over again, you're going to be on the first step. And so most people opt out for becoming experts in a single vertical of knowledge, and we need experts, we definitely need experts, but most people because their success and their financial and reputation success is linked to how fast they climb in these settings.

[00:37:39] Maria Velkova: Most of them don't opt into having a broad view of how these systems work. And that's a big problem, not only in health care, but in many big systems. So I knew because in Cambridge, my taste of entrepreneurship, I was only going into big pharma to learn as much as possible in a very highly resourced place where there's a lot of resources for learning and support.

[00:38:04] Maria Velkova: And take all that knowledge and bring it to venture. So I actually got promoted super, super slowly in my career because every single project that I started was with a new team, a new company. I come from the consulting angle, so I've had multiple big pharma clients. So new team. new company, new vertical, new, completely different area of knowledge.

[00:38:27] Maria Velkova: So I've done R&D I've done clinical trial designs. I've done regulatory strategy. I've done commercial commercializations of healthcare. I've done M&A I really wanted to see end to end how it all connects. And I knew I wasn't going to be an expert in any of these verticals because I wanted to have breadth of knowledge, but I was building my relationships.

[00:38:48] Maria Velkova: So I will have access and I would make connections with the experts. So this has been extremely beneficial to me stepping into entrepreneurship, venture capital, and specifically the psychedelic space, actually. So you asked about how I got to the psychedelic space.

[00:39:06] Raad Seraj: And your most meaningful experience with psychedelics?

[00:39:09] Maria Velkova: Yes. In all honesty, I started using psychedelics recreationally. because I didn't know any better. And the first time I ever took MDMA, my mind was blown. My undergraduate degree was in pharmacology, which means how do substances work on the body on a molecular level? And now neuropsychopharmacology was my favorite sub subject. I was just. Mind blown. How is no one teaching about these substances? If we are educating people on how any substance, not just drugs and medicines, but like food and everything, how does it affect the body? And that affected my brain and body in such a positive way that it got me into a rabbit hole. And so I got super interested, started reading all of the early studies from the 50s, 60s, and into the 70s.

[00:40:00] Maria Velkova: I started. Looking into indigenous usage and that these compounds have been used by humans for many millennia.

[00:40:09] Maria Velkova: But yeah, and that piqued my interest, and from this first recreational experience, I quickly understood that just taking the drug is very small part of the efficacy and the impact, the incredible impact that these medicines can have, and have had on my personal life.

[00:40:28] Maria Velkova: I learned about set and setting, about intention, and I just got fascinated by how the human mind works and how we. create our lived reality into existence and how there's absolutely no two realities that are one and the same, not even in identical twins. And that's why you can never judge others because you can never, ever experience life from their perspective.

[00:40:51] Maria Velkova: And on this rabbit hole journey and once I started looking into indigenous uses and where it can be done in the proper way, with the support. I have learned about ayahuasca and that in South America, in certain legal jurisdictions, you can go and not just take the medicine, but also get that support and do it in a really intentional way.

[00:41:13] Maria Velkova: So my most meaningful psychedelic experience was my first ayahuasca journey.

[00:41:18] Raad Seraj: That's amazing.

[00:41:20] Maria Velkova: And also the most physically painful experience of my entire life.

[00:41:24] Raad Seraj: I believe you.

[00:41:25] Maria Velkova: I would like to iterate on that, not to scare people. Ayahuasca is an indigenous plant. It's a vine, actually, that gets brewed with a chacruna leaf, which has A MAO inhibitor.

[00:41:37] Maria Velkova: Basically Ayahuasca has DMT, but if you ingest orally DMT, there's these enzymes in the body that break it up so fast, it has no effect. In order for DMM T to have effect on the human body, you need to take these inhibitors. So you put a pause, or at least col, that degradation ex of the DMT.

[00:41:55] Maria Velkova: So my experience in the. pain side of things. Actually, I would love to recommend, and I know a lot of people know about this book, but The Body Keeps the Score. Our nervous system and our central nervous system doesn't only regulate our thoughts and thinking, it regulates everything through the peripheral nervous system.

[00:42:16] Maria Velkova: So it's not shocking that I had a lot of physical effects from this experience. And by the way, not everyone has the physical pain. But having read this book now and really deepening my knowledge of the body and brain continuum, I had stored a lot of trauma in my body. And the perfect example of this is that after that ayahuasca experience or before that ayahuasca experience, when I was in corporate, I had developed chronic lower back pain in my corporate career.

[00:42:48] Maria Velkova: And a lot of, most pain is actually not biophysical most pain, there's nothing wrong with people's lower backs and it's that's a common area. It's neurological. But because the spine and the brain are connected with all the nerves, a lot of people actually store trauma in their lower back.

[00:43:05] Maria Velkova: And I went to a physiologist to chiropractors, acupuncture, nothing worked. I did scans, I didn't have slipped discs, there was nothing physically wrong with me. But yet I could not Even fall asleep. The pain was really intense and it never went away and I learned to live with it But it was horrible.

[00:43:24] Maria Velkova: It was affecting my life for sure after that ayahuasca experience I'm very happy to say I have not experienced lower back pain ever again.

[00:43:33] Raad Seraj: Why do you think that is? What's your interpretation of that?

[00:43:36] Maria Velkova: As I mentioned, trauma being stored in the lower back I can't assign or attribute what exactly what, which specific trauma caused it, but all my anxiety and stress were stored in my lower back. And there's a massive concentration of nerves in the sacral region. So again we're yet to see how trauma is reflected in the body, but there is a lot of work, as I mentioned in this book, The Body Keeps the Score.

[00:44:01] Maria Velkova: There's incredible research and evidence on how that kind of connects and works and how mental health and illness Project into the body into physical. Just to close the story on a positive note, a very big proportion of my journey was very painful. And actually, it even took a very long time to feel the medicine.

[00:44:25] Maria Velkova: And I was like, I am ready. I am ready for ego death. I've read all the papers. I know everything on a molecular level. My god, I was not ready. First of all, I was holding on so tightly. to all this trauma and my the ways that my brain helped me cope with my life and trauma and all the stuff.

[00:44:45] Maria Velkova: I was holding so tightly onto that. And I was so much in my cerebral like, Oh, but I learned about this. I know it, that it took actually two and a half, three hours to feel anything. And I actually drank five cups.

[00:44:58] Raad Seraj: Wow. 

[00:44:58] Maria Velkova: I wasn't feeling anything. And, I pasted like the first 30 minutes, the first hour, the second hour, it was like getting close to three hours.

[00:45:06] Maria Velkova: And so I didn't drink them all at the same time, of course, gradual dosing. And then yeah, after four hours is when I started feeling anything. And that was the painful part. The pain was there for quite a long time. And one of the facilitators was really gentle, and she was like, it's okay. She's seen this many times.

[00:45:25] Maria Velkova: She's been serving or facilitating in ceremonies for seven years, and she was very kind and gentle. And she's also someone who I really admire is one of my mentors. Sylvia Benito, she's also in the space. So she is managing multi billion dollar family offices, but also has been training with a Colombian lineage for the past nine years now to serve medicine.

[00:45:48] Maria Velkova: So I really looked up to her, and I really love who she is and, but we just had met recently. So she was gentle and nice to me, I the immigrant life, we grew up with tough love. So at one point, towards the end, she got really annoyed with me and she was like, Maria, go towards the pain, not away from it. What? In a millisecond, like the room filled with light and these tiny little fractals. Wow. I was I started crying from happiness and from disbelief. And for the first time in my life, I felt like my body's connected to my brain. And I, and it wasn't specific all because of this, that it wasn't cerebral.

[00:46:24] Maria Velkova: It was this embodied knowledge where you see a new, you understand, through feeling, you're, see seeing with your feelings. And because as the life of an immigrant and I'm not ever comparing, as I said, we can compare our traumas, but in my lived experience, I did not allow myself to feel anything because I couldn't.

[00:46:46] Maria Velkova: I had to grow up at 11 years old. This was the first time in my adult, in my life where I felt I allowed myself to feel that moment. I will never forget. And it is a little bit fleeting. That's why integration is very important. And it's not like you feel this constantly, but you remember it's so profound that seeing through feeling and understanding through feeling, at least Speaking from myself. Yeah, it was quite impactful. And it was at a very Very good time in terms of time in my life I was leaving the corporate world and entering the psychedelic space through venture capital at which point I had a lot of self doubt I was like who the hell am I to be doing venture capital? And Actually, in early stage venture capital, especially in drug development and healthcare, understanding how drugs work and the knowledge that I have is extremely valuable.

[00:47:39] Maria Velkova: There's no P& L for drug for many years, and there's many years until they launch into market and you're dealing with numbers. My background is scientific. I've been trained as a scientist. I've then went into the commercial side of medicine and health. So yeah, I had massive self doubts.

[00:47:57] Maria Velkova: And that moment I was like, my whole life and everything that I've done in it up until this point has culminated into this. This is exactly what I should be doing. This is exactly what I want to do. And this is my life's legacy. And that feeling and that knowledge. And that realization that this is my life's legacy has not changed.

[00:48:18] Maria Velkova: It's only improved.

[00:48:20] Raad Seraj: Thank you for sharing that. That's profound and perhaps not surprising to a lot of people who've gone through similar transformational journeys. As you were talking, I was thinking that one of the, I guess the challenge that conventional medicine has conventional medicine has always been around discreet areas in the body, discrete spaces, discrete understanding of particular areas of the brain. And, and of course we know there's a huge gap in knowledge between what we know of the brain as in the wiring and how that manifests in complex behavior. There's a whole, we don't understand that at all yet.

[00:48:53] Raad Seraj: We don't understand how those two connect. And maybe that is the idea where we talk about. the spirit. We talk about mind body connection. We talk about integrated or integration of all these. This is parts of our, it's very hard for conventional medicine to wrap its head around it because it has no baseline for that kind of knowledge for that kind of like inter interconnectedness.

[00:49:11] Raad Seraj: In our last part of the podcast and I want to, I hate to bring it up to back to the head, but I want to make sure that we cover everything is. I would love to hear a little bit more about what you're doing with your work with Tabula Rasa now, and perhaps the area that I want to discuss in the time we have left is really around how do you describe from your perspective as a scientist, as somebody who's actually also has a deep knowledge of the commercialization pathway for drugs and pharma is How do you define what medical psychedelics is for a lot of people?

[00:49:45] Raad Seraj: I think the challenge here is that we have this one word psychedelics But underneath it describes or it's an umbrella term for so many different things It's a thematic lens to look at a lot of different aspects of society whether it's healthcare whether spirituality was politics Whether it's anthropology drug development telemedicine clinics software, whatever It's an umbrella term.

[00:50:05] Raad Seraj: It's a thematic lens. How do you describe what medical psychedelics are?

[00:50:11] Maria Velkova: Going back to my ayahuasca experience to bridge into the Indigenous communities, there's so much wealth of knowledge there. It's incredible. And however us Westerners that go to experience, this transformational experience back to these indigenous people's heritage and their history and their identity. We got to go back to the crazy world.

[00:50:36] Maria Velkova: So for me if everyone can experience indigenous way of experience these these medicines, it's absolutely incredible. And they must, but also The indigenous stay in their incredible communities where there's a real sense of community and there are they don't have they have many struggles many struggles, but they don't have a lot of the struggles that we have on in everyday life.

[00:51:02] Maria Velkova: So the Western lens of how life is experienced. I'm sure everyone will agree is not as the same as indigenous lens. So in, in terms of medical psychedelics, what for me it means is I call them ancient novel technologies because they are very ancient and have been used by humans for many millennia but really understanding and respectfully learning from that lens, but also Tweaking and adjusting to the lens of the Western world where we live and we have our first world problems.

[00:51:38] Maria Velkova: It's true. We have very different problems. So for me, medical psychedelics are taking these a lot of times plant derived medicines, but not only understanding from the indigenous knowledge the container around how they need to be best practices served and given to people. Okay. and finding a way to somehow fit that into our current system, healthcare system. And that is not easy.

[00:52:07] Maria Velkova: Are used to the pill popping pharma model. As I mentioned, just taking the medicine and not doing anything else it's only a small, tiny fraction and actually can be dangerous and unsafe in certain cases. So how do we replicate, or at least through inspiration of Indigenous practices, replicate this in the Western world?

[00:52:30] Maria Velkova: Our hospitals are not built for the type of support that is necessary to administer and support the process of this therapeutic intervention. It's not just a drug. It's a therapeutic intervention, multimodal complex therapeutic intervention. Our system is not built for that. We have the pill popping model and we have therapy.

[00:52:51] Maria Velkova: Therapy is not regulated under the same umbrella as any other medicine. That creates massive gaps and challenges for delivering this type of intervention where it's absolutely necessary. I would also add to add a caveat that all of the experts, most, and I don't want to put a number to it, but if you bend my arm and ask me, I would say 85 to 90 percent of the clinical and medical experts in the psychedelic space, at least currently, believe that the therapy is absolutely crucial and necessary.

[00:53:26] Maria Velkova: Not only do they believe that, we are seeing Signals and I say signals of that in the research in the clinical research, but we must remain sober and honest with ourselves because there haven't been any trials where you're testing the efficacy of the therapy. So there's not there is a trial where there's patients on just therapy and then MDMA plus therapy, but there isn't a trial where you're comparing just MDMA with just therapy.

[00:53:54] Maria Velkova: So you, you can only make assumptions about how much impact the therapy has. But from anecdotal evidence from indigenous millennia of knowledge about these medicines, it is True. And I do agree. I think the therapy has a massive importance to it, and it constitutes 50 or more percent of the efficacy of these therapies.

[00:54:17] Maria Velkova: But we haven't shown it in our systematized clinical trial pathways that we have in the Western world. I do hope that there are, I haven't heard of any trials that are looking at just MDMA or just the drug and therapy compared. But I do hope that,

[00:54:31] Raad Seraj: There, there is work about just therapy and MDMA and therapy, right?

[00:54:36] Maria Velkova: there is. Yes. Yes. That's the way MAPS designed their phase two trials and a lot of other of the drug development companies that are putting these compounds through the drug discovery. and development process are doing it. But then you can't compare like with the best trial, but trials are very expensive.

[00:54:54] Maria Velkova: Especially in this space. The best trial would be just MDMA, just therapy compared to MDMA plus therapy in the same cohort of patients in the same study. Then we'll know for a fact actually the FDA draft guidance.

[00:55:08] Maria Velkova: Was very flexible, so to speak on inclusion of therapy. We at tabula rasa ventures we do a lot of thought leadership in the space as well as investing and nonprofit, which we can talk on a podcast. But we ran a pretty big study with seven roundtables of the top level experts from different backgrounds to collect commentary on this draft guidance.

[00:55:30] Maria Velkova: And then we submitted also a pretty detailed documents with feedback. 95 percent of the people on the, on, in the study agreed that therapy is crucial. But there were some people that also questioned it but also with the lens that it's not proven empirically,

[00:55:47] Raad Seraj: Understand, it's also yeah, it's also like a little ridiculous, right? Because if you look at FDA's recent warning with ketamine, It's talking about you shouldn't be self medicating. Hold on. What do you want therapy or don't you want therapy? What are you saying? 

[00:55:58] Maria Velkova: Totally and therapy is not in FDA, and when they don't understand that, and there's no clear pathways of these things connecting, we gotta build that, so this space actually needs to build that, and that is one of the big hurdles that we are facing, and we'll be facing in the commercialization process and we're gonna have another podcast on that because I'm writing, I'm going to be writing a white paper on the commercialization challenges including what happens post FDA basically.

[00:56:26] Raad Seraj: One quick question as an extension of this current thread. And then we're going to go to the last question. So as a VC who has a God's eye view on what's happening, both the foresight, as well as the foresight about what we need, what the future might present in terms of solutions, what are you seeing in terms of companies or solutions out there or interesting models?

[00:56:46] Raad Seraj: That you want that you can share.

[00:56:47] Maria Velkova: Yeah. And just to be respectful of time can always follow up on another podcast. 

[00:56:52] Raad Seraj: Absolutely.

[00:56:53] Maria Velkova: I see what the utopian perfect view of delivering this sort of care delivery to patients with psychedelic assisted therapy should look like, but I also see that there's a lot of steps to get there and we cannot turn the healthcare system on its head from day one. It would get shut off. So I actually, see that a lot of most companies are aiming for that utopian view and they're developing a lot of not just the drugs, but like the tech, the infrastructure what you mentioned a psychedelics umbrella term of all of these things underneath it, they are developing it without big enough consideration of how the current system works and what All of his challenges and gaps and undercomings are, I feel like companies that are developing in a silo without consideration of that, or villainizing big pharma and, screw them.

[00:57:46] Maria Velkova: We're not going to talk to them or consider them, which is literally the biggest commercialization engine for medicine currently, getting it to as many people as possible. There's a lot of nuances here. So I want to be careful, but everyone's like even in the psychedelic space for even though the intention is different, it's not first and foremost bottom line without consideration of patients and outcomes and impact, which is beautiful.

[00:58:14] Maria Velkova: And I'm so so, so happy for that. It's so necessary. But everyone's goal is to get this medicine to as many patients as possible, including broad patient access. In order to do that for you, you really expensive. The most expensive part of drug development. is commercialization.

[00:58:32] Maria Velkova: Big Pharma is really good at that. Big Pharma, most big pharma is only doing that now. They they acquire IP. They don't do much R and D anymore. They acquire IP after phase two clinical trials, and they're really good at commercializing. They have all the relationships with regulators. They have all the relationships with insurers.

[00:58:49] Maria Velkova: They have all the relationships with prescribers to build that level. Of a stakeholder relationship takes many years. And not only that, but if you're building a brand new sales force for a new product where you have not had relationships before.

[00:59:07] Raad Seraj: right.

[00:59:08] Maria Velkova: Even Big Pharma partnered with each other on that point.

[00:59:11] Maria Velkova: I've worked on a project like that. But anyway, not to derail. But to your question, yeah. A lot of two, more than I like. Teams are building without consideration of the realities of the world we live in today. And trust me, I want to get to the best case utopian view of how we can deliver these medicines.

[00:59:30] Maria Velkova: But we're never going to have that opportunity if we don't consider the stakeholders that are going to be making the decisions of whether these things go to patients or not. Now, on the flip side, there are some teams. that are almost, I call it they're operating like a Trojan horse, they're totally writing the narrative with consideration of the reality of healthcare today. And they're being a little bit more patient of getting the psychedelics in that door. And I think those things are going to be more successful. And I know the people, they're not like money hungry, like we only care about the bottom line people.

[01:00:06] Maria Velkova: They actually care mostly about the indigenous, about the ancient kind of knowledge they care about. The stuff that pharma would think it's wool or whatever. They really do. They create that, but when they go into that big pharma meeting boardroom, they're going to be wearing the suits and the ties in the beginning of the podcast, I said, relating to one another, it's important.

[01:00:26] Maria Velkova: It's really important. I've experienced it myself, not only in this career, but in my whole life as an immigrant, and I'm sure you have as well. And so I do think that those teams that are building in consideration of Big Pharma in the current situation are going to be more successful. We're yet to see how much more successful, because there's a lot more challenges.

[01:00:46] Maria Velkova: Actually, I think the biggest challenge is paying for this. It's very expensive. And not only that, because there's a lot. More expensive medicines. For example childhood leukemia drugs that have 97 percent cure rate but cost like a quarter or half a million. I don't even know what the pricing is per patient.

[01:01:04] Maria Velkova: Are currently available. But the issue with this is that It's a very big upfront payment, for the patient and then they don't use the system anymore because the durability of these this is based on clinical trials and evidence. The durability of these medicines is 12 months, 24 months, but that upfront payment is the issue why preventative care is so behind in our medical system, because you got to pay up front, but then you see you realize ROI if you want to get technical over, over many years, but you got to wait until that upfront payments, trickles down into your

[01:01:44] Raad Seraj: Comes back to your point about you're not just talking about psychedelics or doing, novel molecules or novel ancient technologies in your words, but you're talking about entirely different, like a whole paradigm shift in how we think about healthcare, value based healthcare, right?

[01:01:58] Raad Seraj: Being, incentivized long term, value based healthcare, long term well being, which is not what we have today, right? So there's, yeah. There's yeah, we have to, there's multiple revolutions that play here. Because we're almost at the end of our podcast, I want to make sure I give you the floor for one last question, Maria, which is.

[01:02:17] Raad Seraj: You have a multiple identities, right? You have the immigrant, you have the sort of the woman, the female VC, you also have the scientist, you also have all these other things that you're doing, the artist, the creative, and the sort of the burner, for lack of a better word. What is your as a closing statement?

[01:02:34] Raad Seraj: What is your let's say advice to other immigrants, other people, perhaps other women who are pursuing, let's say positions of leadership in science in V. C. In other areas. What do you have to say to them?

[01:02:47] Maria Velkova: Get in touch with me, let's talk Yeah and you don't have to use psychedelics to, to practice mindfulness. And I told you my first kind of whoa, moment was at Cambridge. I've never touched any substance at that point. But be curious, question, ask a lot of questions ask questions, even of society.

[01:03:06] Maria Velkova: Not, we're not asking our systems too many questions and as many as we should, but there is no status quo. Think outside of the box. Be creative. Don't fit, try to fit yourself in a box that someone said that you should fit into to be marked as successful or not successful. Look inside.

[01:03:24] Maria Velkova: Align to this and success will come. This is so important to align with yourself and be authentic. Don't try to be something else. If you're authentic, Everything else will just, the universe will provide, let's just say it's funny, but like your your narrow vision of like where you should be blind spots you and all the opportunities around you, you don't see they're already there,

[01:03:48] Maria Velkova: But it is true and the universe provides, everything you need is already there for you, you just need to have the eyes sight to see it.

[01:03:56] Raad Seraj: Beautifully said. Maria, thank you so much for spending the last hour with us and sharing all your wisdom and your experiences and your journey. It's fantastic. And I really enjoyed speaking with you. 

[01:04:06] Maria Velkova: Rad, an absolute pleasure and I think you should be on your own podcast.

[01:04:11] Raad Seraj: I already talked to myself enough. I don't think anybody wants that. But I appreciate it. Thank you, Maria.