Mystic Ventures
A rolling fund · est. 2021

Backing the next generation of CNS and neurotherapeutics

Thesis

What we invest in, and why it matters

Mystic Ventures invests at seed and pre-seed in psychedelic and neuroplastogen medicines for the central nervous system, and in the clinical infrastructure required to deliver them. Psychiatry has gone decades without a genuinely new mechanism: SSRIs modulate neurotransmitter levels daily and indefinitely, and roughly a third of patients never respond. Psychedelics and neuroplastogens work differently — driving synaptic plasticity and circuit remodeling, so that one or two supervised doses can produce remission that lasts months rather than symptom suppression that lasts a day.

That difference is clinical and commercial at once. Most CNS drug development is a poor venture bet — brain programs carry roughly a 6% chance of getting from Phase 1 to approval — but this category escapes those economics: the molecules carry decades of human safety data, the effect sizes run well above the standard of care, and durable benefit from a single dose is exactly the asset profile strategic acquirers pay billions for. These are the first psychiatric medicines in half a century to consistently outperform the treatments they would replace, and large pharma has begun buying accordingly. The return that matters most, though, compounds outside the fund: depression, PTSD and addiction shorten lives and hollow out the years they leave behind, and treatments that resolve these conditions rather than manage them are how people get more time — and more out of it. We have been investing here since 2021, through the category's winter and into its validation.

About us

Who we are

  • Jeremy Gardner
    Jeremy GardnerFounder & Managing PartnerJeremy has spent a decade at the frontier of emerging industries as a founder, investor and philanthropist. He co-founded Augur and was an early figure at Blockchain Capital, then founded Ausum Ventures in 2018 and wound it down in 2021 to focus exclusively on psychedelic medicine. He built his reputation being early — and right — on an emerging, stigmatized, mispriced asset class once before, and has been an active funder and advocate in this one for nearly a decade.
  • Mack Luby
    Mack LubyAssociate PartnerMack leads sourcing and diligence at Mystic. He works across the neuropsychiatric drug development landscape — competitive analysis, mechanism-of-action differentiation, clinical trial design evaluation and IP assessment — alongside the fund's network of scientific and regulatory experts.

FAQ

Common questions

+How do rolling funds work?

Instead of committing one large amount to a fund with a fixed vintage, you subscribe a set amount per quarter. Each calendar quarter is legally its own fund — a series of the master partnership — so you get exposure to the investments made during the quarters you are subscribed for, and not to the ones that came before.

Capital is called quarterly rather than deal by deal: at the start of each quarter you receive an email and wire that quarter's subscription. Subscriptions renew automatically unless you cancel. Once your minimum commitment period is complete you can increase, decrease or stop at any point; during that initial period you can increase but not reduce. Management fee and carried interest apply at the level of each quarterly vehicle, on the capital deployed in that period. If you stop subscribing you keep your interests in the quarters you already participated in — you simply stop receiving exposure to new ones.

The structure is also why our cadence has run uninterrupted since 2021: predictable quarterly inflows let us deploy counter-cyclically and tranche into companies as they prove out, rather than pausing every few years to raise the next vehicle. Mystic is open to accredited investors only, offered under Rule 506(c) of Regulation D, which permits general solicitation and advertising on the condition that every investor's accredited status is independently verified rather than self-certified — AngelList handles that verification as part of subscription. Our current minimum and committed term are set out on our AngelList page, and interests are offered solely on the basis of the fund's offering documents. Institutions needing a traditional capped commitment can replicate one through a side letter covering a defined number of consecutive quarters, or a dedicated vehicle.

+Why us?

Our founder built his reputation being early — and right — on an emerging, stigmatized, mispriced asset class once before, and has spent close to a decade in this one. That tenure is the basis of the fund's advantage, and it shows up in three ways.

Access. In a category this small, the best rounds are not marketed — they are filled from relationships. Years of being visibly committed to the space, through the downturn as much as the run-up, means founders come to us early and we are offered allocation in rounds that are spoken for by the time they become public. A generalist writing a first check into the category cannot buy that position quickly, at any price.

Expertise on call. We are not bench scientists and do not pretend to be. What we have built instead is a standing network of clinicians, medicinal chemists, trial designers and regulatory specialists we draw on when a decision warrants it — people who can tell us whether a trial design will survive scrutiny, whether a mechanism is genuinely differentiated, and whether an IP position is real.

Co-investors. We invest alongside the specialist funds that have shaped this category and the institutional and strategic capital now entering it. Good syndicate partners bring a second read on every deal, diligence we can lean on, and — the part that matters most to a seed portfolio — the follow-on capital our companies need to reach the milestones that create value.

+Why now?

The category has crossed from promising to clinically and commercially validated: pivotal trials have read out, regulators have moved from obstruction to acceleration, and large pharma has begun acquiring assets outright. Sector valuations and venture financing, which reset hard in the last downturn, have not re-rated to match. You are buying improving fundamentals at lagging prices — the early-but-validated window, not the peak.

Liquidity comes through strategic acquisition rather than an IPO window, which makes returns less dependent on public-market sentiment than in most of venture. The buyers are already active across CNS and psychedelics, and our own book has seen a company acquired outright.

The objection we hear most is scalability, since supervised in-clinic dosing is operationally heavy. It is a real constraint but no longer an unsolved one: thousands of certified sites now deliver supervised psychiatric treatment with established reimbursement, and the next wave of non-hallucinogenic neuroplastogens is designed explicitly for take-home dosing.