Today we have the pleasure of interviewing the CEO and Co-Founder of ZenCo Health Mikkoh Chen, a company that focuses on supporting businesses in the psychedelic industry by providing them with non-dilutive growth financing solutions.
What is ZenCo, and Why is It Important for the Psychedelic Industry?
The cards are stacked against those who can truly heal the world. We believe that there is a new age of wellness, and in an effort to support what we think can have the most impact, and the Psychedelic Renaissance is the best place to start.
It's no secret that traditional financing has not favored the psychedelic medicine market (flagged as "risky" or "vice"), which leaves these providers with limited resources to expand. Delayed repayments of claims (up to 9 months), improper billing, and disqualification from traditional financing impede the sustainability of new providers and the growth of existing providers in this space.
That's where ZenCo comes in.
ZenCo is a non-dilutive growth financing solution aiming to build the future of psychedelic medicine. By creating a solution for the financial inefficiencies and the lack of alternative financing options in the healthcare industry, ZenCo intends to put the power back into the hands of the provider. We take a unique approach to revenue-based financing by incorporating healthcare's unique datasets and leveraging AI/ML to tailor the best financing packages to fuel the Psychedelic Renaissance.
We firmly believe that psychedelic medicine will be the key to making a profound impact on the 52.9 million US adults suffering from mental health conditions. ZenCo will be an engine to help expand this important work nationwide.
Have Psychedelics Played a Role for You in Your Own Life Prior to Launching ZenCo?
Life-saving and life-changing are how I have always described my experience with psychedelic medicine. It's one of the main reasons why I built ZenCo — to expand care, and make this important work more pervasive and understood.
At a young age, I was no stranger to depression and anxiety, having grown up as a minority, a gay man, and as a son of tiger parents — with no shortage of expectations to be the best. In my household, therapy was never brought up as an option. My upbringing taught me to tackle my problems through discipline and encouraged me to abandon my emotions and bulldoze through. As I've grown, I've learned that this is, unfortunately, the case for many growing up in the US. The result is that we're not set up for long-term success when it comes to mental and physical well-being.
While that focus on discipline helped me excel in my tech career, it was at the expense of my health. Once I hit rock bottom with shingles at 25, a visit to the ER at 27, and a few other unfortunate experiences, I turned to traditional medicine and spent a hefty amount of money to heal, but nothing worked. I was helpless.
It wasn't until I decided to leave the tech world to join a mindfulness-focused company called The Assemblage and discovered the power of holistic — especially psychedelic — medicine. It was then that I finally found a solution that worked and became hopeful.
From then on, I knew that my mission in life was to make this critical work more accessible and relevant to those who had suffered as I did.
How Do You Forecast the Growth of the Psychedelic Industry With Respect to Clinics and Patient Deliverability?
The Psychedelic Renaissance is in full force, and for the next few years, the focus will be on the delivery of psychedelic medicine and its healing properties. We are creating a new playground for innovation to be born, and we'll begin to see various startups setting up the foundations for accelerated growth for the entire movement.
The landscape is radically changing, and it is for the better. Psychedelics are becoming more widely accepted in large part due to the global eyes on Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind docu-series on Netflix and key organizations like MAPS. That said, it's not just the eyes of the masses that have taken note — even the Biden administration has announced their intention to legalize psilocybin and MDMA within two years. It's even made headways into employer wellness benefit programs — this is a strong start for employers to begin to accept non-traditional forms of healing as a benefit to support their employees' well-being. With these market movements and an increase in consumer demand, I anticipate health plans to eventually jump on board within the next few years. That is when rapid "scale" can be brought into the fold.
With shifting rules, innovation thrives. A new wave of psychedelic-focused startups will pave the way for clinics to build large-scale data. A focus on building big data is a positive sign for the industry! It will allow the industry at large to be more strategic about how to appropriately serve new and existing segments of the market. I anticipate a suite of products aimed at managing patient data more effectively, delighting their patients comprehensively, and operating their clinics more seamlessly. This collective data will provide evidence to the masses that this method of healing not only works but also that psychedelics is a thriving and profitable industry.
Which Kind of Psychedelic Clinics Do You Think Will Be Successful and Why?
Clinic owners who run their practice like a startup will be agile enough to understand how to best optimize in this fast-evolving sector.
Wellness and healthcare have evolved quite a bit over the years, and unfortunately, being just a great healthcare provider will not result in scaled success. Clinic owners who aim to be top players will also need to build brand equity, have impeccable customer service, foster operational excellence, and secure strategic capital. You'll need the right partners and team to build your dream clinic or clinics like Osmind, Maya Health, AlphaRoot, and of course, ZenCo Health.
Knowledge is also key to your success. Keeping a strong pulse on what is happening on the medical side is equally important to stay up-to-date with what is going on around the industry holistically. I'd recommend following various psychedelic-focused newsletters like PSYfront, Psychedelic Invest, and Lucid News.
That said, if you're not looking to build multiple clinics, I'd recommend still following some key principles from the tech startup ecosystem. Product, people, and process are the three key success factors highlighted in tech, and those factors are not exempt from the healthcare market. Ensuring you have competitive services for your city, a passionate team to help run your business operations, and the compliance protocols to protect your clinic will ensure that your business will be healthy and thriving!
What Advice Would You Give Someone Thinking About Opening a Psychedelic Medicine Clinic?
Build a mastermind group of partners to help you set up and grow on your own terms.
While there are a multitude of resources online to help you build your business plan, teach you growth hacking tactics, and educate you on operational frameworks, trusted partners are a scarce resource. Your ideal partner is one who understands the shifting industry, is familiar with your unique business model, has access to strategic capital, and can open their network to help you grow your business.
ZenCo was built to be that exact partner. Our job isn't finished after providing non-dilutive capital (meaning we do not take ownership in your company), like other financiers. To ensure a successful expansion, we leverage AI to equip founders with the tools to make data-driven decisions, build operational products, and engender an ecosystem for practices to flourish. With the recession looming, ZenCo was engineered to put the power back into the provider's hands, especially when it comes to building your practice.
Let's shape the future of wellness together and collectively solve this mental health epidemic!
