HIMS & HERS

Andrew Dudum was working at Atomic, a startup studio in San Francisco, when he noticed something obvious that nobody was acting on: men had real, treatable health problems — hair loss, erectile dysfunction, skin issues — and they were doing absolutely nothing about them because going to the doctor felt awkward and expensive.

In 2017, he launched Hims with a simple premise: let men consult a licensed doctor online, get a prescription, and have the medication shipped to their door. No waiting rooms.

No embarrassing conversations face-to-face. No pharmacy counter.

Just a clean website, a $30 monthly subscription, and a box of generic finasteride showing up at your apartment.

The branding was deliberate and sharp. While most healthcare companies looked like hospital waiting rooms, Hims looked like a lifestyle brand — pastel colors, cheeky copy, direct-to-camera ads that named the thing nobody named.

'This is for your penis' was basically the pitch. It worked.

Hers launched the following year, extending the same model to women's health — birth control, anxiety, skincare, and later weight loss. The company raised $100 million in its first year of operation.

That almost never happens.

Hims & Hers is a telehealth subscription platform. Here's how the money works: a customer visits the website, fills out a health questionnaire, gets matched with a licensed provider (asynchronously or via video), and if appropriate receives a prescription.

The medication is then fulfilled through Hims & Hers' own pharmacy network and shipped directly to the customer. They pay a monthly subscription — typically $20 to $90 depending on the product.

The genius is in the margins. Most of what Hims sells is generic medication — finasteride, sildenafil, minoxidil — that costs pennies to manufacture.

They're essentially selling convenience, branding, and the removal of friction. The markup is significant.

A month of generic Viagra through Hims costs around $30. The same drug at a traditional pharmacy with insurance might be similar, but without the subscription model, the brand, and the at-home delivery that means you never have to look a pharmacist in the eye.

They've since expanded into compounded medications — including compounded semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic) for weight loss — which is where revenue really accelerated. In 2024, weight loss products became one of their fastest-growing categories.

They also have a licensed pharmacy, which gives them more control over margins than pure telehealth plays that rely on third-party pharmacies.

Hims started with three core products: finasteride for hair loss, sildenafil for ED, and topical treatments for both. These are still the backbone.

Finasteride is the classic subscription play — once you start, you don't stop, because the moment you stop taking it your hair falls out again. That's customer retention built directly into the biology.

The skincare line — moisturizers, retinoids, acne treatments — expanded the addressable market and gave the brand a reason to exist for men who weren't losing hair or having bedroom problems. It's also a gateway product.

Get someone buying face wash, then upsell them on the finasteride.

Hers covers birth control, anxiety and depression treatment (SSRIs, primarily), skincare, and sexual health. Mental health is a meaningful part of the Hers business — online therapy and psychiatric medication management at subscription prices addressed a genuine access gap.

The weight loss category — compounded semaglutide, tirzepatide, and associated programs — became the headline product in 2024. Hims offered it at $199/month when branded Wegovy was $1,300/month with perpetual insurance battles.

The value proposition was impossible to ignore, which is exactly why it exploded, and exactly why the brand-name drug manufacturers wanted it stopped.

The counterintuitive move was talking openly about things that the entire healthcare industry treated as unspeakable. ED medication advertising existed — think Bob Dole and bathtubs — but it was always weird and clinical.

Hims ran ads on the New York City subway with direct, almost comic copy about erections. The shock value was the marketing budget.

They also nailed the subscription flywheel early. Healthcare is historically transactional — you get sick, you go to the doctor, you buy drugs, you leave.

Hims turned it into a recurring relationship. Once someone subscribes for finasteride to stop going bald, they're paying $30 a month forever, or at least until they give up on their hair.

Customer lifetime value in that model is enormous.

The Ozempic wave was a legitimate lucky break that they executed well. When GLP-1 medications became a cultural phenomenon in 2023 and 2024, name-brand Ozempic and Wegovy were backordered and wildly expensive.

The FDA allowed compounding pharmacies to produce semaglutide during the shortage. Hims jumped on it aggressively, launched compounded semaglutide at a fraction of brand-name prices, and the revenue impact was immediate.

Weight loss went from zero to a massive chunk of their business in under two years. The FDA eventually ended the shortage designation — which became their biggest fight of 2025.

The compounded semaglutide problem is real and existential. In early 2025, the FDA declared the semaglutide shortage over, which meant compounding pharmacies — including Hims & Hers — would legally have to stop producing compounded versions.

Hims pushed back hard, publicly and legally, arguing the shortage wasn't actually resolved. The fight matters because weight loss had become central to their revenue growth story.

Beyond the regulatory battle, the bigger structural threat is the pharmaceutical companies themselves. Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are not going to sit quietly while a telehealth startup undercuts their $1,000-a-month drugs with $200 compounded versions.

They have lawyers, lobbyists, and the FDA's ear in ways that Hims simply doesn't.

There's also the profitability question. Hims & Hers has been public since 2021 and only recently started approaching consistent profitability.

The customer acquisition cost for DTC health is brutal — they spend heavily on advertising, and not every subscriber stays. Churn is the enemy of the subscription model, and anyone who subscribed for Ozempic alternatives may disappear if pricing or availability changes.

And then there's the underlying telehealth model itself. Post-pandemic, regulators have been revisiting how permissive telehealth rules should be.

If prescribing standards tighten — particularly for controlled substances and weight loss medications — Hims' convenience advantage shrinks.

Hims raised $100 million in its first year, which is a sign of either exceptional timing, exceptional founders, or both. Forerunner Ventures — Kirsten Green's fund that backed Warby Parker, Dollar Shave Club, and Outdoor Voices — was in early and made sense thematically.

Forerunner has always understood DTC brand-building in categories that need a rebrand.

IronSource, Thrive Capital, and a clutch of other venture firms participated in subsequent rounds. The backing validated the thesis that consumer health, done with brand sensibility and telehealth infrastructure, was a real category and not just a niche.

The real validation came when the company went public via SPAC merger with Oaktree Acquisition Corp in January 2021 at a $1.6 billion valuation. SPAC deals were everywhere in 2021, but Hims had actual revenue to show — unlike many SPAC darlings that were still mostly dreams and slide decks.

The stock had a volatile post-merger journey, falling significantly before recovering as the weight loss business gave the growth story a second act.