Amy, Henry and Protik then took to the stage, with Emerson kicking off a fireside-type discussion with the Helena executives.
But why had Helena, which has invested in grid-scale energy storage and carbon-negative diamonds, become so interested in psychedelics?
“The shit works”, Elkus responded when asked what drew him into the space. “The data on this is so incredibly compelling, it kind of doesn’t even require using stage time to talk about it.”
In what followed, Elkus echoed Doblin’s assessment of today’s “crisis state of humanity” and talked of a present “real risk moment for human civilisation”, adding that “you cannot solve any problem without, as a prerequisite, human coordination […], human empathy”.
In MAPS PBC and psychedelics (drug development) more broadly, then, Elkus sees a “dual benefit”.
MDMA-assisted therapy, for example, represents something that “in the here and now works”, but also something that “in the medium- and long-term”, if we “introduce these concepts to civilisation”, could “kind of end the model of accumulation without empathy or without distribution”. “That’s what I think psychedelics can allow for the rest of the 21st century”, Elkus said.
“And so to have an opportunity to work on both of those at the same time, especially without them cannibalising each other, is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he said, “and we’re just glad to be here.”
Helena was founded by Elkus, who dropped out of Yale in his second year to dedicate himself full-time to the project. His father, Bill Elkus, founded Clearstone Venture Partners in 1997, which invested in PayPal among other tech startups.
In a 2017 Huffington Post interview, Elkus described Helena as “a new type of organization that was structurally designed for 21st century problems, and I wanted to do my part and create one.”
At the Psychedelic Science 2023 fireside discussion, Helena Managing Partner Basu explained that the organisation has both a not-for-profit arm (“a kind of policy arm”) as well as a for-profit investment fund.