The Mushroom Industry Has No Borders

July 9, 2026
By Dennis Walker

Over the last few years, the Mycopreneur platform I founded has taken me to places I never imagined I’d go. From the first fungi festival in India as a keynote speaker to emceeing a stage at a 30,000-person PsyTrance Festival in Hungary back-to-back years, and from Harvard Law School to SXSW to recent opportunities in Switzerland, Uganda, and Jamaica, to name a few.

Along the way, it became clear to me that the mushroom industry is far more global and ripe with opportunity than many people operating in it currently recognize.

Very early on in my process of connecting and collaborating with mushroom entrepreneurs globally, a throughline began to emerge: The mushroom startup space is thoroughly international yet not fully integrated or collaborative yet. People who build mycelial connections across borders benefit from a global lens and enhanced network that brings vitality to the entire system they’re a part of.

The global mushroom entrepreneurship space is a true frontier market opportunity; the possibilities are so abundant and largely untapped that there is virtually infinite opportunity to create value in new, largely uncontested spaces. The market is so underdeveloped that collaboration breeds far more value than competition at this point.

Why Global Collaboration Is the Future of Entrepreneurship in the Mushroom Industry

“There are endless opportunities for mushroom entrepreneurs to learn from and share with colleagues from other regions of the world,” says Santi Ongay of Colorado-based Full Canopy Genetics.

“The best example for us is our collaboration with Valenveras, a company based in Spain. Together we developed a model for the Valenveras NIR, enabling us to test for alkaloid potency in mushrooms. We can now run hundreds of analyses in a day, with a portable device. This quantity of data would otherwise be inaccessible or unaffordable through other testing methods such as HPLC. We learned a lot from the Valenveras engineers in the process.

Another great example of international collaboration for us is Myco-Bag. We have partners in Spain who leverage our genetics and recipes to provide grow kits around Europe. In the process, we have learned so much about European culture and developed strong international relationships and networks. These collaborations have created valuable learning & teaching opportunities for everyone involved.”

There are already a number of other concrete examples of U.S. based mushroom startups that are partnering with international events and companies to expand the offerings and reach of everyone involved. Colorado-based analytical potency testing lab Tryptomics recently formed a community partnership with the Tryp Expo in Berlin, clearly laying the foundation for international cooperation and exchange in the niche and largely untapped elevated natural product testing sector.

International collaboration isn’t frictionless. Regulations, language barriers, and economic disparities complicate partnerships constantly. But despite those challenges, the mushroom sector remains unusually open to cross-border experimentation and knowledge exchange. The way through this is to move at the speed of trust, which requires a heightened capacity for developing and cultivating relationships outside of one’s traditional sphere of influence. Fortunately, this ability can be cultivated through traveling and learning about other cultures through firsthand experience.

The European Mushroom Industry Is Picking Up Momentum

There are also an increasing number of European-based mushroom brands that are looking to establish partnerships with operators in the U.S.

“The functional mushroom space is growing on both sides of the Atlantic, but the U.S. and European markets are evolving in very different regulatory and consumer environments. That’s actually the opportunity,” says Seth Colchester, Founder of Netherlands-based functional mushroom companies Mycogenius and Functionalmushrooms.eu

European brands emphasise third-party testing standards and a deep tradition of transparency, while U.S. brands bring scale, storytelling, and the ability to build community quickly. When founders from both sides start sharing what’s working, whether that’s extraction methods, supply chain transparency, or how to educate consumers without making claims you can’t back up, everyone’s product gets better, and the whole category gains credibility. I believe brands that figure out how to collaborate across borders, rather than just compete, are the ones that will define this industry for the next decade.

In the six years I’ve been running Mycopreneur, this willingness to seek out like-minded individuals and communities operating in the same space from different angles has led to an abundance of growth and opportunity that continues to pay dividends today.

One of the first principles of entrepreneurship that I learned was to pay attention to what other cultures are doing effectively which people in my own area are not currently leaning in to – for example, in rural northern Thailand I went out on a foraging trip with a very charismatic local guide who cracked jokes relentlessly and infused the humid and difficult mountain hike with belly laughter while pointing out the local plants.

I realized that no one I had been on a foray with back in the U.S. treated a mushroom foraging experience like it was also a comedy show. Characters like the individual I met on that fateful hike in Thailand have directly informed my own approach to infusing humor and laughter into the mushroom education space, which has largely become my trademark.

The mushroom industry may still look from the outside like it operates in fragmented regional silos, but the increasing momentum and number of entrepreneurs building relationships across cultures and borders are already shaping what the next phase of the industry will look like.