Lars Wilde

Businessperson

Lars Wilde is the chief operating officer and co-founder of COMPASS Pathways. COMPASS is a UK startup formed by Wilde along with George Goldsmith and Ekaterina Malievskaia in 2016. It is a life sciences company that works to expedite the approval and delivery of mental health therapies to patients. Currently, COMPASS is focused on testing psilocybin for use in patients with treatment resistant depression (TRD).

Wilde earned a bachelor’s in international business administration from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University. He went on to earn his master’s in finance from the IE Business School in Madrid, Spain. Wilde also studied finance and leadership the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and entrepreneurship at the Copenhagen Business School. He speaks Dutch, English, German, and Italian.

Professional Endeavors

Wilde’s financial and consulting career includes positions at Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Waterland Private Equity, and The Boston Consulting Group. Also, he was the founder and chief executive officer of the leading German kitchen online retailer and cooking magazine Springlane. In addition, has seed and co-founding investor interests in companies such as Otto Wilde Grillers GmbH, Pakama GmbH, Cyber Direkt GmbH, and Einhundert Energie GmbH.

A Personal Stake in Psilocybin Therapy

Just like co-founders Goldsmith and Malievskaia, Wilde’s involvement with COMPASS stems from the personal experience of someone close to him dealing with depression. He says, “I have witnessed how devastating the impact of depression can be on a person’s life in my close circle of friends. My friend had the privilege of being treated with psilocybin and he has been relieved of the debilitating disease ever since. Unfortunately, this treatment is not available to most people in the world and its efficacy has yet to be proven in large-scale clinical trials. Having founded and invested in several companies in the past, I recognised that COMPASS offers the opportunity to build something immensely beneficial for our global society. I am excited by the outlook of solving one of humanity’s largest unmet medical needs together with an extremely smart and vision driven team.”

More information on Wilde is found in his LinkedIn profile and the COMPASS pathways website.

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Barb is the former Editor and one of the founders of Psychedelic Science Review. She is currently a contributing writer. Her goal is making accurate and concise psychedelic science research assessable so that researchers and private citizens can make informed decisions.