EXCLUSIVE: Silo Wellness Announces New CEO And Issues Shareholder Letter
Nicolás Jose Rodriguez
6 min read
Silo Wellness Inc. (CSE: SILO) (OTCQB: SILFF) (FRA: 3K70), a leading global psychedelics company, announced on Thursday that its founder and chairman of the board of directors Mike Arnold is assuming the role of interim CEO.
Arnold will “continue to lead the Company through its planned acquisition of Dyscovry Science Ltd., a biotechnology company, and in its planned Oregon psilocybin business objectives,” according to a company press release.
Former CEO Douglas K. Gordon and Silo Wellness have agreed to part ways “in order for Mr. Gordon to pursue other endeavors, including global distribution opportunities for sales of Marley One.” During his tenure at Silo Wellness, Gordon was responsible for the creation of the Marley One global mushroom brandin collaboration with the family of legendary musician Bob Marley andthe launch of psychedelic retreats in Oregon and Jamaica - a first for a publicly-traded company. Gordon also led the Company through its public listing in March of 2021 and two major financings.
New CEO
CEO Mike Arnold, an experienced Oregon trial attorney, founded Silo Wellness in 2018 and acted as CEO until August 2020. As Silo’s president and chairman of the board, he was responsible for the company’s Ontario Securities Commission and Canadian Securities Exchange compliance, investor relations, financing and corporate development.
In the last five years, Arnold successfully raised over $12 million for his startups.
“He was actively involved in the cannabis sector in Oregon, having defended cannabis farmers in both federal and state courts. Additionally, Mike was involved in cannabis regulatory work in Oregon and Missouri, drafting cannabis license applications and securing land use approval for cannabis facilities as state regulations permitted,” Silo reported.
“Mike developed the concept for the world’s first metered-dosing psilocybin nasal spray in 2018 together with his co-inventor. In Jamaica, he has extracted psychedelic compounds from raw biomass and developed and quality-tested products there,” added the company in the press release.
Silo issued a letter from Arnold to its shareholders in which he explained that with the recent announcement of its pending transaction to acquire Toronto-based psychedelic biotechnology company Dyscovry Science, Ltd., Silo is embarking on a “long-envisioned direction...in the midst of potential market consolidation.”
“I founded this company in 2018 with a firm vision for psychedelic wellness," Arnold said. "We have scrapped along our way from picking feral psilocybin mushrooms out of cow dung in Jamaica to developing the world’s first psilocybin nasal spray to a public listing to this: being poised to be the only publicly traded psychedelics company providing psychedelic healing right now through Jamaican psychedelic wellness retreats while at the same time innovating the 'what's next' for psychedelic pharmaceutical healing.”
Oregon: The Last Chance to Be First
Arnold referred to the potential of Oregon “to introduce psychedelic healing to the masses. With the intent to maximize shareholder value, we look to Oregon as the last chance to be first to market in the plant medicine space,” Arnold said in the letter. “Oregonians have the opportunity to usher in potentially hundreds of thousands of people for their first psychedelic experiences," which he qualified as an “unprecedented branding opportunity to forever be imprinted on something that so many first-time users rate as one of their greatest lifetime experiences. Drinking a pop or buying a car doesn’t do that, and I challenge any industry to give me an example comparable to a psychedelic experience.”
As the only Oregon-based publicly-traded psychedelics company with experience in a legal market (Jamaica), Arnold said they're well-positioned to move into the first U.S. state turnkey.
“We knew that we couldn’t export mushrooms or truffles to Oregon from Jamaica, but we could export our psychedelic retreat intellectual property (...) We believe our team is well-positioned to emerge as a global leader in the space through our 'Oregon First' strategy.”
Jamaica Retreats: Arnold explained Silo will be exploiting valuable market differentiators and focusing on what they do best: offering psychedelics to clients.
“Going forward we will focus on what we have that is unique. We have psychedelic retreat logistics in Jamaica firmly in hand and access to the Western Hemisphere’s only legal English-speaking psilocybin jurisdiction prior to Oregon coming online next year. That’s another valuable differentiator,” Arnold said. “With our operational experience, we may also have a B2B opportunity to essentially white label retreats to those who have been in the underground for so long or to those that have a relevant marketing platform and social media that screams out 'just add psilocybin.'”
Arnold has plans to better exploit marketing opportunities in the retreat space which he qualified as “very uncrowded” and scaling the Jamaican retreats.
Healing Combat Veterans
There are many potential collaborators eager to bring their expertise and marketing skills to Jamaica and Oregon. To that end, Silo is negotiating with parties that have experience with veterans retreats and mental illnesses in the hope of expanding their Jamaican offerings and establishing a path forward for veterans’ access in Oregon.
“On average a veteran takes his own life almost every hour of every day. These tragedies have continued every day while the psychedelic industry has been promising to provide access to this medicine sometime in the unknown future. Enough is enough. I founded a psychedelic retreat in Jamaica and that platform needs to be available to those who need it most,” Arnold said.
Bob Marley-Branded Functional And Psychedelic Mushroom Products
“When I first began speaking with the Marley family in late 2019/early 2020, I was envisioning a global brand that epitomized the best of the human condition," Arnold said. "I wanted to focus on the best that psychedelic mushrooms have to offer: the ability of a person to find a renewed sense of purpose in helping and loving others as they would wish for themselves. Bob Marley’s One Love philosophy represents this.”
Pharma Opportunities, De-Risking The Psychedelic Space, The NASDAQ
“We hope to de-risk the space by presenting assets that account for a future in psychedelic pharma and the potential future in the United States adult-use market as signaled by Oregon voters in November 2020 and anticipated to open up in 2023,” Arnold said. “We plan to present ourselves as an incubator holding company targeting nascent market opportunities and readying them for potential spinout.
“If the Dyscovry opportunity is successful, I envision a potential Nasdaq up-listing of that asset or Silo as a whole (after spinning out any touching-the-fungus assets that may be unappealing to those regulators),” Arnold said, adding that the company is talking with a NASDAQ listing consultant.
“This would require significant gains in our share price which we hope can occur with the new vision. However, to accelerate that opportunity, (...) we have embarked on a 20-1 share consolidation.”
He said they're in negotiations regarding further financing potential on the back of the Dyscovry opportunity.
“We have weathered the storm and are now recapitalized as of April. This psychedelic rocket ship is fueled, and the launch pad is built with the mission firmly in hand. Let’s go explore this sector together,” Arnold concluded.
