The Psychedelic Accelerator: How Elephant Gate is Funding the Next Generation of Healing

In this exclusive interview, Pink Elephant’s Investment Director Natalia Fedulova sits down with Jason Najum to announce the launch of the Elephant Gate Accelerator. With a decade of experience in venture capital across the globe, Natalia discusses why Pink Elephant is focused on essential infrastructure needed to turn psychedelic medicine into a scalable reality.  #PsychedelicAccelerator #MentalHealthInnovation #StartupFunding #HealthTech #PinkElephant #venturecapital 

Note: this podcast was recorded in March 2026.

In this conversation:

— The $150K Opportunity: Why Pink Elephant is looking for 10 early-stage startups to join their new global acceleration program.
— Infrastructure Over Hype: Why the industry’s survival depends on SaaS, marketing, and fintech tools, not just new drug compounds.
— The 3-Year Floodgate: Why the upcoming FDA approvals mean startups must start building delivery systems right now.
— The "Survival Fee": How Pink Elephant supports founders so they can drop everything and focus exclusively on scaling.
— Building Global Synergy: Connecting founders from Australia, Europe, and the US to share insights and solve local regulatory hurdles.
— The Perfect Pitch: What investors are actually looking for in the "Second Wave" of psychedelic medicine.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalia-fedulova/
https://www.elephantgate.co/
https://pink-elephant.co/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Our thesis is that we want to invest in infrastructure of uh psychedelics. Uh we believe that like in two three years we have floodgate open with all the FDE approvals. It's the acceleration program we are planning to invest in up to 10 companies. This year we want to invest 150k in each of them. So we're trying to like get the best teams who is really interesting to build into the space.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Welcome to the Evolving Minds podcast by Pink Elephant. Insightful conversations with the entrepreneurs, executives, and change makers shaping the future of psychedelic therapy and progressive mental health. Meet the Minds, changing the business of healing.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

On today's episode, we dive deeper into the world of psychedelic business and venture capital with Natalia Fedlova of Pink Elephant. Discover how Pink Elephant is pioneering investment in psychedelic infrastructure by launching an accelerator program to support early stage startups. We learn about the potential of these innovative therapies and how they may help build the future of psychedelic medicine. Okay, we're here with Natalia from Pink Elephant. Hello, Natalia. Good morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Hey Jason, how are you?

SPEAKER_02 1:11

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Good morning for you. Good night for me. Nice to speak with you. So why don't you introduce yourself to the listeners?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Sure. I am an investment director in uh Pink Elephant Fund. I am responsible for running the fund, and soon we're gonna have the acceleration programs. Um I am I was working in uh venture capital for the last decade. Before that, I was working in investment banking for almost uh 10 years, did a career there, then moved to San Francisco. Was working 500 startups, was running the acceleration programs all around the world in Korea, India, uh Georgia, Russia, um, Peru, Miami, Arizona, San Francisco. Probably I forget something. So I have the experience with the acceleration programs for the seed pre-seed startups all around the world. And one year ago, I finally started working in uh psychedelics. So like my personal passion for psychedelic space and my professional passion for working with the early stage startups collide, and I'm super happy to be here and explain more on like what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Okay, so pink elephant is a good match for your uh for your experience and your and your and your skill set and your and your passion. So yeah, that's great. Maybe give a uh a quick summary of you know what is pink elephant, what are what are we focused on? Give a little uh pink elephant uh elevator pitch.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Sure. So pink elephant, it's like it's two parts. One is fund who's investing in early stage startups, and another one is the builder who is building uh mostly around the uh Europe, uh, all the businesses that supports psychedelics in uh progressive mental health. Uh and we have like state of mind, uh our portfolio, one of the portfolio of the builder. But I'm most responsible for the fund, I'm running the fund. And uh our thesis is that we have um we want to invest in infrastructure of uh psychedelics, and we want to invest into the companies who are gonna be building into the space, and uh we believe that like in two, three years we have floodgate open with all the FDE approvals, and we don't have enough education, we don't have enough tools for people for delivery of like for deliver the medicine to the uh people. So this is like where we are uh trying to put our money in mines and resources uh to make sure like in three, four years, whatever uh time is needed for early stage startups to build businesses, they are ready for um new uh FD approved.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

Yeah, well, that that timing seems right. So it's just a quick summary. So Pink Elephant has um the VC kind of investment fund side, and then a company builder with which you you're launching an accelerator program soon.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Uh yes. So it's like it's two parts that's supposed to like they we're gonna help each other because we have builder and we have like some infrastructure already, like with the marketing, they can help our uh portfolio companies in the fund.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Yeah, yeah. So it seems Pink Elephant's building a pretty nice uh ecosystem that could interconnect and help each other all the way through. Uh, I guess full disclosure is that I work uh for States of Mind, uh, one of the uh portfolio companies of Pink Elephant. And in terms of the timing, that actually does seem to coincide. I mean, I've been in the psychedelic space for almost six years now, and it's you know, it goes in waves. We had a we had a big boom and then a little bit of uh consolidation. Companies dropped off, you know, waiting for FDA approval for things to actually go a bit more mainstream and for the industry to scale. But it does seem like the timing is right. The three to five years it would take for uh startups to get off the ground and running does seem to coincide with we are actually now at the final stages of FDA approval. We have several trials at in phase three. Uh so it does seem like the timing is right because we've been speaking about it in this industry for years. We need the infrastructure, we need to build the infrastructure. But a lot, it was a little bit too early four or five years ago to start building this out. There wasn't the business for it. Uh so it does, it does seem like the time now is the time to build the the infrastructure.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah, and we have like Combus is probably gonna be the big one this year, hopefully. And if we have like this uh big market signal, the we believe that investors also gonna be like jumping into the space. That's why it's like timing to start uh the acceleration program right now, and by the end of this year to have like some um kind of showcase of our cohort uh to like show the investors what can be built and have like uh get get more more traction and uh get more money into like uh ethically built businesses right now before we have um whatever, whatever might bad things happened into the space.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Yeah, yeah. Once uh there will probably be another boom once the first uh FDA approval comes in, and uh it will probably be more measured. There was a crazy boom, you know, with 60 companies on the stock market, 95% of them came and went right away. Uh a lot of people lost money invested in these really early stage ones. So I it if I think the next wave is going to be more responsible and uh a bit more mature.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Yeah, we hope so that we like learning on our mistakes. And I'm like, I'm coming from the finance, from the investment banking, and I always like keep talking to people who uh invest in the healthcare but never invest in like specifically in the psychedelics or maybe not specifically into some frontier uh things. So they are interested, but they are waiting for like some big um uh signals. So the Abbey buying Gilgamesh was one of them. If we have like Compass approval, it's gonna be the huge one and we have like more money. So now it's private capital, and like the next steps is gonna be the big names who might in yeah, might invest in something like that.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're coming in, they're coming in slowly. Uh big institutional funds are slowly built, they've been buying up MindMed and Compass in a tie bit by bit in the background. So they're waiting. They're waiting to come in in a bigger way soon. Uh okay, so the uh now that we've explained uh what Pink Elephant is, maybe explain a little bit about the accelerator program, which is the upcoming news.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Sure. So it's uh the acceleration program. We are planning to invest in up to 10 companies uh this year. We want to invest 150k in each of them uh at the beginning of the program. And we won't have like six or seven months of the actual acceleration, the programming. It's a little bit longer than uh it's in the usual like classical acceleration programs, but we want to take uh our time because like it's first time um it's building in the space, and space is very complex, so we want we don't want to rush it and want to like learn slowly how to do it. So we're planning to start sometime around May and run the program till December or January and have the uh demo day or showcase with all those companies in the cohort that's uh gonna be showcasing to investors, to potential customers, to the world what they uh been able to build. It's for seed and pre-seed startups. So it's on the stage when you are have first customers, or maybe you just have an idea, but also uh if you don't have customers yet, it's supposed to be like some kind of proof that you are the team uh for the task. So if you have experience, if you have like some um maybe uh promise of like early uh customers to or you've been talking to like 100 different people and they told that this is the thing that needs needs to be done. So we're trying to like get the best teams uh who is really interesting to build into uh and in the space.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Okay, so the so the goal is uh investing in 10 companies uh in the in the next year. Yes. And not exclusively psychedelics, it could also be health tech or innovative innovative health tech therapies.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Specifically for this acceleration program is supposed to be anything that helps with infrastructure. So if some companies is building infrastructure for something else, like some frontier mental health right now, and they are gonna be ready to pivot into the psychedelics as soon as legislation allows or like some geography opens, we're also open to uh invest in those companies too.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Okay, very good.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

So you said uh you're Europe focused, but not only uh the focus is like psychedelics and uh infrastructure for psychedelics. If we have like something that might be pivoted to that, because it's like it's very complex. We have like different geographies, people who are building in the geographies that is like not open yet, but they have the skills, they have the um technology, they have everything, they just like waiting for like next steps, and it's moving pretty fast right now.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Geography is not not completely location dependent, where you have some flexibility there.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

We are open to like globally. We decided not to. We thought that we're gonna be like open for like some geographies. Where we decided to open the application for everyone around because we have amazing things going on in Australia. We have like uh Europe, like and Czech Republic, we have UK, we have uh Canada and US, obviously. And we uh one of the ideas of the acceleration program is to all these people to connect not only with uh our Pinkelephone resources, but also to each other and share what their findings this is like uh being like working with acceleration programs for many years, I can see that this is probably even more important than the money that uh in in the programs.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Yeah, so so you've you've seen a kind of synergy and a sharing of people in the program.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Uh it's synergy, and people are becoming like founders, they're pivoting because they have like insights from the company who is working next to them. It's the long like lifetime friendships and the emotional support. It's like so many things at the same time. And they also have like uh accountability when you're like meeting every week and you like reporting what's going on, you have uh like so many things. So it's like it's good to have community around who is also like doing something in the very uh like now it's like less stigmatized, but still it's like difficult to explain sometimes, even like your relatives, what exactly you're doing. And when you have like community around you who also understands the how mission-driven and how you are passionate about it, this uh this is a huge thing, and this also like boost for the business.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

It does build a sense of community.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Uh so I you said a little bit about maybe a little bit more about the type of uh startups you're looking for.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Of course. So what we like uh actually mean by infrastructure, it's might be uh integration and support uh for people who did the experiences, and after that they need uh more help that uh now we have on the market. It helped to um all the sizes for therapists, uh all the infrastructure, like coordination and infrastructure in terms of marketing, in terms of operations, maybe like some specific like finances, because we still have like problems with the marketing when we uh with the just word of psychedelics people being uh banned on the like meta platforms, and it's like difficult to market it. Um this is also problems that some of the companies trying to solve. We're looking for different types of like directory or platforms uh to connect people in uh one place. Uh, we're looking for all types of education programs because we know that uh it's gonna be a lot of therapies that we need to educate all the same time. We know that there is like people who um gonna be going into this like clinics, into this experiences don't uh and don't understand what it is. So it's like it's big, huge market, and we also like trying to find someone who's uh willing to build it uh at scale.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Yeah, those are all those are all important points. Uh yeah, well once these therapies get approved, we're gonna see that there's gonna there's gonna be needs on on all those points. So yeah, uh yeah, I don't think we realize that these therapies have uh some needs as you prepare, as you come out of the therapy, um uh financing, payment, insurance, yeah, marketing, that's a very good point. Uh yeah, there's uh all kinds of little um little mini ecosystems that are gonna have to get filled in. So very interesting. So what so that that's what you're looking for going in. How do you see the companies at the end of the uh program?

SPEAKER_01 15:35

So we think success it would be because we giving them like 150 its survival fee for them, like for founders to be able to just drop everything else and concentrate on the businesses they're building. So we hope that by the end of the program they're gonna be build uh build enough traction to raise another round. This is one of the outcomes. Uh, another one is uh they be able to make some money for themselves. So if we have like one of those, this is the success of the program. And like we as a fund, all like also we like interesting for them to live and to move forward, and we're gonna be like doing the uh follow on rounds uh at the end of the program, but we cannot like promise that. It like it depends how it's gonna how it's gonna go. And of course, like we're gonna bring all the um investors that we know in the space, uh, the people who's currently investing, people who are curious about investing in the space. It's like one of the uh benefits of the acceleration programs, it's to have this demo day when you don't need to like chase investors all around the world um booking the calls with them, like trying to make them take this call and then pitch. So we have all this like infrastructure inbuilt into the program. So they're gonna be like preparing for the pitch, they're gonna be explaining how investors think about it. It's gonna be the room full of investors, and they have like their uh actually one uh big event when they explain what exactly are they doing, and uh under the uh specific attention of like our team, gonna be like delivered the pitch and hopefully get investment.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Okay, that's uh that's a nice offering. You give them the whole uh the whole package, that's a complete program. Maybe quickly a little bit. I mean, I guess we assume uh if we work in this space, we know about the promise of psychedelics and maybe the the ethical and like mission statement behind it. But it's possible there's potential founders out there that aren't directly in the space yet. So why psychedelic therapies, why these innovative therapies, like you know, what's the the moral uh driver, the moral mission statement behind this?

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Maybe I'm not gonna be like answering directly a question, but like uh let me know. We have like two types of founders who is like want to work into the space. One of them is like clinicians who knew like exactly what psychedelics are, how they worked, and they understand the space, the complexity, the ethics, and like all around that, but they never actually done the business part before. So this is like one of our founders. Like, we can help in uh get mentors and explain them how to build it, how to scale it, how to do it like safely, how to do like all the finances stuff. In other part is people who actually then uh build the businesses, they get exits, they have that personal experience with psychedelics, and it helped them on the personal level. And now they're thinking like, okay, I want to like give back, I want to build something in like in the space, and they're trying to like get in, but because it's stigmatized, it's complex, it's uh very like legally uh challenging, uh some of them backed up. So my idea is to have like both of them in one cohort to like see each other and have the synergy between them. So this is probably uh I would not explain person who never tried psychedelics, who's never been curious to psychedelics and explain them and trying to sell them to go into the space. I will not because it's like it's too big of a risk, but people who know and understands how much profound it can be and how big change it's gonna bring. So this is like this is our audience of the founders who we uh really want to work with.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, and I think at the at the outer edge, there's people who maybe haven't experienced it themselves, um, but see the science, look at it objectively, realize that there's uh the potential is legitimate, and bring bring their other business experience into the space because um uh yeah, I I've I've interviewed a CEO, for example, Doug Drysdale of Syben, and he's from mainstream biotech. Doesn't look like someone that went to an ayahuasca ceremony, but he just saw the science and uh brought his his his straight mainstream biotech experience to this because he he but he believed in the product uh based on the data. So there's all yeah, there's all types of people that can come to this space.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

I would love to have like more like that, and I would love to have like more uh researchers so we can have actually like the hard conversation that this is actually works and this is the data.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Any other points you'd like to uh get across to uh potential founders? Anything else you want to get out there?

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Yeah, there's like a few things because usually when you're thinking about the acceleration programs, you think that it's gonna be like very heavy programming, and you will be like sitting on site and like learning some stuff that you probably uh already know. We design this one on the completely different uh level. We want people because we uh the program all around the world, it's uh fully remote. We might have just one uh retreat for all of us, one on site uh at the end of the year to meet each other. Maybe we'll have like uh then uh meeting with investors. Uh, and it's gonna be tailored by specific needs because we're looking for very different uh type of founders. Uh, we have the big amount of people in the industry who's willing to help, who already worked in uh worked with the clinicians, who's worked with the big pharma, who's worked with the retreats people who work with the legal, and they are all like showing. Big interest into the like contributing to this acceleration programs. So we are trying to find the specific people by the specific problem that founders are solving right now. We will have very light programming, just explaining like what it is, uh, give people space uh to connect with each other, give people space to understand who our mentors are and what kind of benefits they can get from them, and just pick for themselves what kind of uh mentors they want to work with, what kind of problems that uh they want to solve. So it's gonna be uh lighter than the usual acceleration programs, and it's gonna be more tailored specifically by the businesses.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Okay, all right. So giving giving them space uh but giving them support at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Yes. This this is the thing. Maybe like one um thing that's gonna be mandatory for everyone is preparing for the pitch day for the demo day. This is uh everyone gonna go through that. There's like no uh amount of practice that you can have to be ready by yourself, and like running a lot of programs all around the world, you like always doing like two or three weeks of preparation before the demo day. If you're doing it like fifth or like tenth time, you still need two, three weeks to prepare for the for the pitch.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Any other any other points to uh to get out there?

SPEAKER_01 23:30

I think that's it. I think it's uh I'm really looking forward to it to like make it first time into like uh psychedelic space, something that I did like many times in the early stage uh tech startups. And it's gonna be it's gonna be fun and challenging, and uh really looking forward to like all the applications and all the founders who want to be involved.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Yeah, I'm I'm excited as well because uh having I was working for a business focused publication at Microdose, and I I saw that first wave, I saw the comp the growth, and then I saw them all go away. So I'm very curious to see how this new uh the next wave is structured and what comes out of it, and to see uh a more solid next cohort of companies uh that are you know solving the actual the gaps rather than the theoretical ones from five years ago. So uh all right, I look forward to it. Thank you, Natalia.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

All right, excellent.