Alex Dorr Of Mushroom Revival: Five Things I Learned As A Twenty-Something Founder

Find something you love, you’re good at, that pays the bills and the world needs. If you find something that checks all those boxes, you’re already light years ahead of the curb.

As a part of our series called “My Life as a TwentySomething Founder”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alex Dorr.

Alex Dorr is the founder and CEO of the Austin based functional mushroom company, Mushroom Revival Inc. Alex co-hosts the number one mushroom podcast in the world, “The Mushroom Revival Podcast” and authored the book “Mycoremediation Handbook: a Grassroots Guide to Growing Mushrooms and Cleaning up Toxic Waste with Fungi” (2017). He was recently nominated as one of Austin Inno’s 25 under 25 and is absolutely obsessed with the power of mushrooms.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! What is your “backstory”? Tell us about your background.

Thank you for having me on, it’s an honor.

Growing up I was diagnosed with chronic lyme disease, depression and anxiety which made living life very difficult. Brain fog, lethargy, painful swollen joints, unable to get out of bed, hobbling around, etc. Once I hit rock bottom in my health I dedicated myself to living a healthier way of life. Through that dedication and research I found that functional mushrooms could support my overall health and wellness. After trying them for myself and noticing amazing results, the more I dug into mushrooms I realized they could clean up oil spills, create new alternatives to plastics and styrofoams, create eco friendly bioinsecticides, store carbon in our soils and so much more. I realized they held some of the solutions to solving some of our biggest world’s problems and barely anyone was talking about them or studying them. That’s when I knew I had to get my degree in mycology (the study of mushrooms), write a book, launch a podcast, create the company, Mushroom Revival, and dedicate the rest of my life to mushrooms.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your company? What lessons or takeaways idd you take out of that story?

We created the largest and the first USDA certified organic Cordyceps militaris mushroom farm in the Americas. Since we were the first in so many ways it came with a mind boggling amount of research and development, and that came with a ton of constant failure. It wasn’t funny at all then but now looking back years later I’m really happy to say that I can now have a good laugh at all the mistakes we’ve made along the way.

This one day we messed up a huge batch of mushrooms and it was months of work that turned moldy. We had to put on these tyvek suits you see in movies in quarantine zones and carefully remove all this contaminated material from our building to prevent it from spreading to our other batches. Here we were, a group of people in full tyvek suits dragging this tarp across the ground into the woods when a 16 wheeler came around to the back of the building to drop off some packages. He stopped his truck, we stopped dragging the tarp and there was a long awkward silence of him looking at us like we just killed someone and were disposing a body. You could only imagine in his head he was thinking he was just a witness to a crime slowly calculating his next move. Honestly I’m not sure how much better it made him feel that we tried to reassure him we were a mushroom farm and in the tarp was filled with contamination. Let’s just say he had lots of follow up questions that day. I am sure we were probably the most interesting people he delivered packages to in his whole career as a truck driver.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Like anything on the market, there’s unfortunately a lot of illegitimate products out there. A study done in partnership with USP who sets standards for pharmaceuticals found that around 75% of all Reishi mushroom products on the market don’t actually contain any reishi mushrooms at all. Most companies use something called “Mycelium on grain” which are the “roots” of a mushroom growing on a filler material like oats or rice. The final product doesn’t contain any actual mushrooms, up to 80–90% grain fillers, and a fraction of the beneficial functional compounds one is looking for. This is where we wanted to be different and make products that not only worked but were light years ahead of anything else on the market. We have tested our cordyceps tincture and compared it to the best selling competitors on the market and we had up to 400 times more active compounds than the leading competitors. We are so confident in our quality we were the first mushroom company in the world to have a QR code on our packaging where our customers can transparently see our lab results for themselves setting the standard in the industry for quality and transparency.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

My biggest role models and cheerleaders have to be my parents. I feel incredibly grateful they didn’t force me down a path of being a doctor or a lawyer and actually supported me in what I wanted to do even if it was as weird and crazy as studying mushrooms!

Are you working on any exciting projects now?

We just launched the world’s first USDA organic mushroom capsules and we are about to launch the world’s first USDA organic vegan mushroom gummies in March 2022. We have some more products in the pipeline which are first in the world advancements but unfortunately I can’t give away too many hints just yet. As someone who has a degree in mycology, a decade of mushroom farming experience, and my own health journey I’m completely obsessed with making the next cutting edge products to connect people with the wonderful world of mushrooms.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

We were the first mushroom company in the world to implement a practice of planting trees for every product we sell. So far we have planted almost 50,000 trees all around the world, helping to create more jobs, protect biodiversity, store carbon, build soil, and make the world a better place.

Do you have a favorite book that made a deep impact on your life? Can you share a story?

As a scientist I view the world in one lens which likes to categorize, label with latin names and follow the scientific method. The other aspect of myself is a very spiritual person which loves to practice almost the complete opposite of this. Half of my book library consists of dense heady textbooks written by PhDs and the other half are spiritual books written by monks. I like to say it keeps me balanced. Out of all the books I’ve ever read, the most influential has been the book “Be Here Now” by Ram Das. It’s incredibly digestible, yet unimaginably profound and deep. As I develop and grow as a human being it’s something I can go back and reread and get an entirely new depth of understanding. I highly recommend it for everyone, whether you feel like you are “spiritual” or not.

Can you share 5 of the most difficult and most rewarding parts of being a “TwentySomething founder”. Please share an example or story for each.

Difficult:

1. It’s harder for a lot of people to take you seriously when you are a younger age. It’s something I often have to prove to people that I know what I’m talking about. We had to develop a clever system of bringing people on our team that were older to show up to certain meetings just to initially set some people’s minds at ease until they get to know me better. It’s a funny social game we have to play but I don’t mind, whatever gets the job done.

2. I’ve learned the hard way that because of my age there are certain people in the world who will try to take advantage of me. Again it’s another funny game we have to play to make sure we have all our contracts squeeky clean and tight to make sure that doesn’t happen. Two great lessons I go by to protect myself in this domain are “inspect what you expect” and “hire slow and fire quick”.

3. As a twenty something founder as much experience as I have with mycology, I don’t have decades long experience running various businesses. 99% of what I’m doing to scale the business I’m relying on gut instinct, data and the sage advice of advisors.

4. Over the years I’ve learned how to outsource more and more of the tasks of the business and thankfully do not have to work 100+ hour weeks anymore like I used to. But during the first couple years it was hard to be social like a lot of my friends like live a “normal” twenty something life when I would work 7 days a week from the second I woke up to the second I went to bed. To be honest I was always a little jealous of the freetime of some of my peers to be able to just “clock out” after work, but at the same time I wouldn’t trade the passion I had to be working on a greater mission for anything.

5. Similar to #4 it’s taken me a few years to learn how to separate my personal life from my work life. Your twenties are supposed to be filled with adventure, growth and connections not working your face off every second of everyday. It’s been difficult to learn how to seperate myself from “my baby” or “my dream” which is my company and set up boundaries where I can exist outside of it and feel okay in all the ups and down that the business takes.

Rewarding

1. As a young person I feel like I have a slight advantage of having more energy and also quicker to adopt new changes in technology and otherwise to grow the business. I see so many older company get “stuck in the times” and are so resistant to change or new growth and they end up getting too stagnant. I think that’s what helps us keep making firsts in the industry is that we can identify or even create new trends and pivot so fast and easily.

2. Most people in their twenties are still figuring what they are doing in their life and the sad truth is a lot of people never really figure it out. I feel incredibly grateful to be doing what I love, what pays the bills, what I’m good at and what the world needs at such a young age.

3. It’s incredibly rewarding to watch the company grow over the years and know that it will impact future generations and me for the rest of my life. To know I’m so young and there is so much to look forward to helps to give me inspiration to keep pushing.

4. Like a child it’s such a rich experience to grow in tandem with something in the most formative years in my life. As I grow, the business grows and vise versa. Every new years eve I like to go through the previous year week by week, month by month and look at all the lessons, growth and changes that occured and I’m constantly blown away at how fast things evolve.

5. The most rewarding thing about founding a business so young is time. As much faith as I have in this business, it’s incredibly comforting to know that I’m still incredibly young and whether this works out or not, I know that I have *knock on wood* plenty of time to start many more ventures in the future.

What are the main takeaways that you would advise a twenty year old who is looking to found a business?

Find something you love, you’re good at, that pays the bills and the world needs. If you find something that checks all those boxes, you’re already light years ahead of the curb.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this. :-)

The person that I would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with would be Leonardo Dicaprio. I think he’s the most talented actor in the world starring in some of my favorite movies of all time. But beyond that I think the philanthropy work he is currently doing to protect our biodiversity on this planet is of the utmost importance if we are going to continue being a cohabitant species on this planet.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

@mushroomrevival on all major social media platforms is the easiest way to find us. The Mushroom Revival podcast on all major audio streaming platforms is how you can find our podcast. Finally www.mushroomrevival.com is the best way to find our products, and educational content about mushrooms.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Thank you!