Karyn (Kat) Thompson has Elon Musk to thank, in a weird way, for a radical career change.
Three days after the billionaire Tesla CEO took control of Twitter, Thompson’s 20-plus year stint in the tech industry came to an abrupt end. She learned she was part of a 4,000-employee layoff when she lost her access to the company Slack at 9:52 p.m.
That was in the fall of 2022. Now Thompson is six months into a new life as a psilocybin entrepreneur.
“It was sort of a silver lining,” she said of the layoff. “I was already looking to get out. When we got the layoffs, I was like, maybe this is the universe saying this is the time.”
Thompson opened Fractal Soul, a licensed service center, in Beaverton last November. Now serving as CEO, she has 10 employees on the payroll and rents out Fractal’s space to about 40 outside psilocybin facilitators.
“I feel so much more fulfilled and happier,” Thompson said. “There’s stress, but it’s a different kind. It all worked out for the best. I would not have wanted to stay at that company led by him.”
Since Oregon’s first-in-the-nation regulated psychedelic program rolled out last year, 27 licensed service centers have opened their doors, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Adults can legally partake of psychedelic mushrooms only at these establishments, under the guidance of a licensed facilitator, of which there are 326 in Oregon, Thompson included.
Thompson first came to Oregon in the late 1990s to attend college at George Fox University, where she earned a degree in computer science. She spent 10 years at Intel Corp., followed by six at Nike, then did management consulting before landing at Twitter, where she led strategic planning remotely from Portland.
Even before she was let go, she had micro-dosed with psilocybin, sometimes called "magic mushrooms."
“It really transformed my work life, reducing my anxiety and depressive days, and it allowed me to focus more,” she said. “I’m a firm believer in micro-dosing.”
When Musk took over Twitter, Thompson and her team had nearly completed a strategic planning project, including a market analysis, that took thousands of hours and cost millions of dollars, she said.
“He came in and we said, ‘Do you want to see what we’ve done?’” Thompson recalled. “He took all that information and shredded it. It was painful. ... He could have learned a lot.”
She explored her options. First, she got her facilitator license remotely from Entheogen Institute in Ashland, then started trying more therapeutic dosing of psilocybin.
“About halfway through the facilitator training, a lot of us were going, ‘Where are we supposed to work?’” Thompson said. “I was realizing that if I was serious about making an income, I needed a service center, and there weren’t any at the time, so that’s why I decided to open my own.”
There were obstacles to overcome, to be sure. The licensing fee for a service center runs into thousands of dollars. Then there’s the tax liability and the challenge of finding a suitable space, as well as raising startup capital and complying with 125 pages of state regulations.
“I ended up having to dig into my personal reserves and bootstrap it myself, which was not easy,” Thompson said.
She and her leasing agent looked at more than 100 properties before finding a space in Beaverton, becoming the first service center to open in Washington County.
“It was a really intense time,” she said.
Six months before Fractal Soul opened its doors, Thompson put up a website to collect leads. She offered free consultations in July and August. By the time she opened, the first two months were already booked.
Thompson has personally facilitated 15 sessions but is now leaving that to others because running the company takes so much of her time. Fractal has served 150 clients altogether. Most sessions are one-on-one, as opposed to a group. The standard package runs $2,200, in the middle of the pack for prices. Fractal also added a sliding scale option, with sessions in the $1,400 to $1,800.
So far, her clientele has skewed on the older side — 50s through 70s. At first, 90% were from out of state, but now the ratio is around 60-to-40%, she said.
Thompson is hoping to draw clients from Intel, Nike and Columbia Sportswear. With more than two dozen service center now vying for business, Thompson said she is working to differentiate her business as “super personable.” The majority of staff identifies as queer, while the leadership team is "all female, all mom," Thompson said.
Lately, prospective clients will say they’re interviewing four different centers to find the right now.
“Our consumer is getting more savvy,” Thompson said. “People find their home base. We’re so relationship-oriented. People feel like they’re not booking with a stranger.”
Fractal has seen many return clients, she said. But there’s one new prospect Thompson has, albeit jokingly, considered targeting: Elon.
“I literally thought of tagging him on Twitter,” Thompson said. “You never know.”
