The Venture Codex

Participated · Seed · Feb 2023

Syndi Health provides an AI-driven platform that recommends, monitors outcomes, and facilitates payment for third-party digital wellbeing apps and telemedicine services. The company launched in 2020 and initially deployed its solution on student platforms, onboarding over 20,000 users across more than 1,300 schools, universities, and colleges in the UK and US. It is now shifting focus to employers, healthcare providers, and insurance companies and has signed a pilot contract with one of the largest healthcare charities in the UK. Syndi plans to execute pilots with public and private healthcare providers and employee benefit programs to grow its user base and capture additional clinical evidence. The startup will use the new funding to continue building the platform, expand the team, and accelerate B2B customer growth. Financially, Syndi secured equity and grant funding in a $2.0M pre-seed round and has also won a separate £400K Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst grant to validate the platform within the NHS over the next 18 months.

Led · Seed · Feb 2022

Fluence is an expertise-driven educational platform that provides professional certification and training in psychedelic therapy and integration. Founded in 2019 and based in NYC, the company works directly with licensed healthcare professionals and graduate students to advance clinical skills and evidence-based psychedelic care. Over the past two years it has trained nearly 1,000 practitioners and has partnerships with drug developers including Beckley Psytech, Tryp Therapeutics, and Clairvoyant Therapeutics to develop therapy manuals and custom training for clinical trial therapists. Fluence plans to expand its course and certificate offerings and bolster development of training software and its e-learning platform. The company is also developing a psilocybin-assisted therapy program to meet Oregon Health Authority requirements ahead of Measure 109 implementation. Leadership includes founders Dr. Ingmar Gorman and Dr. Elizabeth Nielson and COO Michael Kuntz.

Participated · Seed · Nov 2021

Wavepaths builds on scientific research showing the critical role of music in psychedelic therapy, offering clinicians an AI-powered system that generates personalized, adaptive soundscapes in real time. Practitioners can seamlessly shift emotional atmospheres, depth, activation levels and instrumentation, drawing on compositions from artists such as Jon Hopkins, Greg Haines, Robert Rich and Christina Vantzou. Founded in 2019 by Dr. Mendel Kaelen and Anna Rickman, the company partners with research institutions, universities and psychedelic-therapy providers to study and optimize therapeutic outcomes. The product is currently in closed beta, is used in more than 29 countries and has a wait-list exceeding 5,000 practitioners ahead of a planned public launch later this year. Fresh capital will be deployed to refine the platform’s personalization and music-generation algorithms, scale infrastructure and add features for a broader range of healthcare practices.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2021

Journey Clinical provides licensed psychotherapists and eligible patients access to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies, supplying clinicians with tools to deliver PAP and connecting patients to a medical team and network of licensed mental-health professionals. The company began with Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) and plans to expand to other psychotherapeutic treatments as they are validated, researched, and approved for broader FDA use. Since opening its platform in February 2022, Journey Clinical has grown its KAP clinician network from 30 to about 700 and has treated over 1,000 patients nationwide. The company is co-founded by Jonathan Sabbagh (CEO) and Myriam Barthes (COO). Financially, Journey Clinical raised an $8.5M Series A, bringing total funding to roughly $12M. The company intends to use the funds to continue scaling its offerings across the U.S. Journey Clinical operates a decentralized clinic model that enables licensed psychotherapists to provide legal psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, beginning with ketamine. The platform handles the pharmacology and access to prescribing clinicians while therapists deliver customized psychotherapy treatment plans. Therapists pay a $200 monthly membership for services including access to a prescriber, a white-label EHR, KAP training, a directory profile, and a peer community. Patients pay $250 for intake consultations and $150 for follow-up consultations. Journey says the market is disparate, with over a million licensed mental health professionals lacking the infrastructure and access to prescribers needed to offer these treatments. The team includes co-founder and CEO Jonathan Sabbagh, psychiatrist Kyle Lapidus MD, Ph.D., and Brigitte Gordon DNP.

Led · Seed · Jul 2021

Monument Therapeutics is developing MT1988, a novel fixed‑dose combination drug aimed at treating cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia (CIAS). The company pairs the drug with a computer‑based digital biomarker that measures latent inhibition to stratify patients by attentional filtering and predict likely responders. MT1988 has shown substantial cognitive improvement in preclinical studies and combines two well‑characterised small molecules acting on nicotinic receptors, formulated to enhance cognition while mitigating common side effects. Monument is conducting a Phase 1 safety study in healthy volunteers and expects results by the end of next month (also noted as expected in Q2 2025); if successful it plans Phase 2 trials in early‑stage schizophrenia patients later this year. The drug is intended to be used alongside existing antipsychotic medications as a complementary therapy. The company recently raised funding to support progression of MT1988 through further clinical development. Monument Therapeutics is a Manchester, UK-based precision neuroscience company led by CEO Dr Jenny Barnett. The company leverages a novel drug development strategy that uses digital assessments of cognition to match patients with pharmaceutical treatments. Its lead asset, MT1988, targets the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. Monument plans to use newly raised funds to support the clinical development of MT1988. The company announced a £1M equity investment from the Forster Foundation alongside two board appointments—Dr Randeep Grewal as Chair and David Ford as an Investor Director. The financing is intended to advance MT1988 toward clinical milestones and further the company’s precision‑neuroscience approach. Monument Therapeutics is a precision neuroscience company spun out of Cambridge Cognition in 2021 that uses proprietary digital biomarkers and digital cognitive assessments to stratify patients for CNS drug development. The company focuses on matching patients with appropriately targeted compounds to reduce heterogeneity in trials. Its pipeline includes programmes for cognitive impairment in schizophrenia and for neuroinflammation; the lead candidate, MT1988, is a novel fixed‑dose combination that showed substantial cognitive improvement in preclinical studies. Monument has completed a £1.0m fundraise and announced a further £0.5m grant to enable clinical development of MT1988, with first clinical trials expected to begin in the coming weeks. If those trials are successful, a Phase 2 clinical trial is expected to begin in early 2025. Cambridge Cognition retains a significant shareholding in Monument, which was reduced from 28% to 25% after the round. Monument Therapeutics is a spin-out from Cambridge Cognition that develops digital biomarkers to stratify patients in neuroscience drug development. It uses proprietary cognitive assessments licensed from Cambridge Cognition, including CANTABTM, to identify patient subgroups with homogeneous neurobiology. The company combines these digital stratification tools with repurposed drugs that have favourable safety profiles to de‑risk development. Its lead programmes target cognitive impairment in schizophrenia and post-operative cognitive dysfunction (POCD). Monument plans to commercialise its digital biomarkers across multiple neuroscience indications to support R&D and therapeutic development. The company relocated to Alderley Park, Cheshire and appointed Jenny Barnett as CEO; Cambridge Cognition has retained a minority shareholding.