Dr Amy Kruse
Neuroscience investor

As our understanding of the brain advances every year, Kruse leads the way in identifying new opportunities while investing both capital and expertise to help them flourish.

What brought you to neuroscience?
It was a personal interest. My parents were English teachers but I was a real scientist. They got me a microscope and the rest is history. I think biology is romantic. It’s all about discovery and the natural world, right? And we’re developing all these tools to understand it.

Why did you decide to move into the investment side of things?
I’m a very curious, expansive person. There are people for whom working on one research problem is quite satisfying but I always found myself drawn towards those broader perspectives where you can connect the dots. And then, as an investor, I do believe that neurotechnology is such an incredibly explosive and growing area. This is the right time to be deploying capital in this space.

What is your investment priority: transformational potential or financial gain?
I try to hold all those things together. When you’re looking at venture investing, you are looking for outsized returns and so there’s a kind of calculus between market potential and a transformative or unmet need in that space. And then it’s really an engineering question: can we take this concept or this thing that we’ve proved in the lab and turn it into something that would be scalable?

How have some of your investments helped to enhance the human experience?
There are a couple of different types of investments that I’ve made that do that. Some are in the mental health space but relate to what’s happening in psychedelic medicine. When I was a graduate student, it was thought that the adult brain was quite fixed and it really couldn’t be changed very much. And now we know that there are myriad ways of inducing neuroplasticity and helping the brain to change. So, we’ve been looking at techniques and tools that that help us heal, learn new skills or work on cognition.

How have you honed your instincts for a good investment?
I’m seeing what’s coming along, I have other CEOs in my network who are introducing me to folks, and I’m very fortunate that there is a flow of opportunities and ideas.

You’re an avid gardener. What lessons learned from nurturing plants have you applied to your day job?
The reason I garden is because I like putting my hands in the dirt, it is really one of the only things that calms me down. We all need things that keep us grounded. Certainly, that’s the case in investing, where things can get pretty out of control. I also love the fact that there are cycles and seasons – there are absolutely ebbs and flows to investing in companies. And if your plant dies, you simply start over with another seedling. It is truly one of the things I love about gardening: “It didn’t work? OK, tomato, we’ll give it another shot.”

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