Hims & Hers: $4.3BN Market Cap on $2.3BN of Revenue: The Comeback

Sorry. I was a I was a lot younger. We looked a lot better back then. But I’d say we’re pretty good by now.

I might be the only person that believes this, but I think running the company in the public markets is more fun than being private.

I love it for a few reasons. One, if you’re a highly competitive person, you get to put out high benchmarks every ninety days and see if you can actually deliver on it. And you can build a high performance team to say, hey. We put this out, and it’s a big stretch. Let’s go kick ass and figure it out. When you’re private, it’s so easy to get cozy. You know, the worst case scenario, if you got some VCs that call you and they’re stressed out about something, but in the public markets, it’s like it’s boot camp.

It’s it’s like you gotta be you have to deliver. So I love that from a competitive standpoint. I also love the ability to hire talent, like, in the public markets because they they can see the vision, and you’re forced to not only talk about where you’re gonna go ten years from now, but if you’re gonna actually, like, make steps quarter to quarter to prove it. So as a competitive person, I think it’s a lot of fun. Also, when you step back, like, you know, we we went public really early.

We went public after, like, thirty six months of launching, which was a little bit crazy. When you look at the biggest companies in the world, they went public within the first few years of launching. Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, all of them. Like, they didn’t stay private for ten, twenty years. You know, the founder was forced to figure it out in the public markets how we’re gonna grow, how we’re gonna get efficient, and how we’re gonna tell a big vision, and and I think that’s a lot of fun.

I think if your business is ready from a predictability standpoint and you have a long term orientation, then I would encourage you to go public. I think you those two things have to be true. I think you have to actually be able to predict your business with consistency because you can’t enter the markets without that confidence, And you also have to be ready to sign up for a decade or two in the markets. Right? This is not something it’s not a quick exit. It’s not a liquidity event.

It’s that’s the beginning. And so I would encourage any founder that has those two dynamics to consider it.

I think you do. It takes it takes discipline. I think it takes hiring the right people. You know, I think I I focus on hiring a certain type of people. You know, they’re not particularly fancy in background. They’re not credentialed with, like, all of the really great tech companies. Like, that’s not what I look for. I look for mostly people who have been builders and have gone through some shit is the, like, the honest reality. So if you look at our team, you know, Yemi, our CFO, he was, you know, the divisional CFO of Uber during COVID.

The whole business disappeared overnight, and he had to figure it out. Or Dieter, our chief product officer, she was at Robinhood during GameStop. Right? Had to figure out that chaos.

Yeah. I seek out grit. I seek out a lot of grit because I think when you’re disrupting an industry, which we are, and and even in the last year, our category has exploded and changed and and been fraught with all types of chaos. You have to have a team that is used to being uncomfortable and used to getting through it and used to staying calm and having that that resilience. And so I absolutely search for people that have seen those types of ups and down and and thrived in them because I think when you’re disrupting, it’s just inevitable that that’s gonna happen.

I think often people as they scale, maybe founders as they scale, fall into the trap of trying to hire people that have seen bigger scale than them and are more strategic, and they they feel like they’ve gotten to the point of success where now it’s time where they uplevel the talent to non start up y folks, right, to, like, real professional people. And I think that is a huge, huge mistake. Huge mistake. I think as you scale, there’s a pressure to go hire that big strategy person who has more credentials than you, and it’s kind of it feels almost confidence inducing as a founder to, like, get to that level, I think you have to fight that at all costs.

I’d I’ve made mistakes. I’ve hired people like that because I thought it was was the right move, and and I’ve always come back to find people who love the mission, who love to build, who are tactically excellent at what what the function actually requires, and, again, who are gritty as hell.

So many things. I mean, I’m constantly trying to find the balance of being in the weeds and building a team that can scale independently of me. That line of how hands on you should be, how strategically involved you should be, how tactically involved you should be versus Why you why

be intentional about where you get into the weeds. I I don’t believe in this concept of, like, every design review comes through me. Everything that ships comes through me. Every decision comes through me. Like, it’s you one of the things I learned earliest in my career is if you can’t hire people that are smarter than you, you will fail. And young managers struggle with this all the time. They they’re scared to hire people that are better than them because they feel like if I hire somebody better than me, what the fuck am I even doing here?

Why am I here if I just hired somebody who’s better than me? And in fact, it’s completely the opposite. If you wanna continue to scale in our organization or any organization that’s growing, you have to realize that your job is changing every twelve months to level yourself up to the next next highest leverage focus area. In order to do that, you have to replace yourself every 12 months with talent equal or better always. To me, that’s a really important realization as as a CEO and founder, which is I wanna hire people better than me, and and so I trust them.

Yet at the same time, if there are specific areas of the business that are critical, either strategic decisions or tactical implementations being worked on, you have to know when you go deep. And you need to acknowledge the team, hey, this is something that’s really important. I’m gonna go deep on it. I’m not gonna go deep on everything, but this is important. I’m I’m gonna be in the weeds here.

That’s a great question. Probably not many more than 2,000 to 3,000. That’s a big range. Yeah. We operate about a million square feet of pharmacy fulfillment throughout The US. And so we have a a large chunk of labor force, which is actually just variable labor responsible for actually pharmacy oversight, pharmacy review, and actually shipment of medication. So AI can do a lot in regard to efficiency for core product, engineering, accounting, finance, marketing, etcetera. But when you’re actually running facilities, physical facilities, and a lot of this is actually required doctor and pharmacy oversight, you know, those you can’t get as much leverage on.

I think those two areas are critical. We’re also seeing it have massive leverage in design. Right? So we deploy about a billion dollars in marketing spend every year across the Hims and Hers brands. You know, the cost to do a live photoshoot, the speed of a food photoshoot for every single product launch. You know, we probably have thousands of variations of TV commercials, Facebook ads, Google ads, etcetera. The speed of iteration with AI in that function, think, is actually one of the most tangible that I’ve seen across our organization.

No. No. And I think that’s one of the funny things about our business is we are constantly in the headlines as a single category business. When we first launched, when you and I first met, we were the erectile dysfunction business. Right? And it was front page of the New York Times, and it was fun and silly and provocative. And all we did from everyone’s perspective was ED. And then we launched hair, and then all of a sudden, was like we’re a hair loss business. And then we launched the Hers business, and everyone said, oh, Hers is never gonna work.

You’re just an ED and hair loss business. And then eventually, we launched GLP-1s, and everyone said, oh, now you’re just a weight loss business. And, you know, a year from now, people will say, oh, you’re just like a peptides business probably, if I were to take a guess. Right? And and so I think the the reality is under the hood is that you have a dozen completely different clinical categories, completely different businesses, each scaling with very solid robust growth, which is why this business is interesting.

Like, that’s why I run this business is the durability of it is quite strong because you have 10 different businesses with completely different customer segments. So weight loss is actually nowhere near the majority of this business. I don’t think ever will be just because you’re continuing to expand core categories and a lot of new categories. So

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, you you know, when we first met, I was, you know, over with with Jack Abraham running Atomic Ventures for a long time, and that training of zero to one exploration, that is what Hims and Hers is. Right? Like, I think of it as a public shell for innovation and bringing great health care to consumers, which means every year we’re testing completely new go to market strategies, completely new categories, and the way we think about it internally is just different bets. And some bets, you you starve, and some bets, you fund, and some bets, you you ring fence to allow exploration for a year or two, but they’re run increasingly independently.

The the DNA of management is is to look at it as a portfolio that continues to scale. Because, ultimately, in our business, you know, health and wellness, what what makes up great health and wellness is constantly changing. There’s new diagnostics. There’s new devices. There’s new drugs. There’s new learnings about, you know, the sauna and, you know, cold plunges or whatever it might be, whatever’s trendy. Right? Like, all of this is changing, and it’s gonna continue to accelerate. And our job is to curate the best and bring it to people at scale at an affordable cost.

And so we have to think about this, frankly, as a portfolio that’s constantly evolving.

Have to do this on a four times a week. No. I don’t don’t for twenty minutes. It cuts all Have you

We’ll

sauna together next time I’m in London.

It’s a great question. For us as a business, I think it’s important to constantly be in a customer’s mind, the mindshare of the new evolving health and wellness categories. And so I think, in many categories, we’ve been quick to market, and in many categories, we’ve been kind of, like, you know, patient to market. And in retrospect, I constantly am kind of evolving my perspective on, like, how fast we should be there. My net net takeaway is I don’t think we actually need to be first ever in market.

I wanna be best in market. And so when I think of new categories, peptides, for example. Right? You know, a lot of conversation about ten, fifteen peptides going from category two to category one compounding so that people can actually get access to things like b v c one fifty seven, TB five hundred. This is an incredibly interesting category. You won’t see us be first to market in this category. You’ll see us, when we launch it, feel extremely confident in the clinical protocols, extremely confident in the guardrails, make sure that the supply chain and the quality is done to a level we are you know, feel is bulletproof from a pharmaceutical standpoint.

So, you know, there’s a lot of introspection in my brain around speed and prioritization of which categories to enter, but what I always come back to is not being first but being best so that from a brand standpoint, people know Hims and Hers to be high quality and trusted. Like, when we actually bring something to market, you know it’s safe. You know it’s done right, and you know it could be something that’s that’s powerful and and important for your for your health. I

What are

think you have to be both for us. I think you have to have the best at the most affordable price eventually.

about a $149 in eighteen months. On Hims? We just announced the Wegovy pill at $1.49.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It’s through partnership. No. Absolutely.

We wanna curate the absolute best at prices the masses can afford. And I think the way you do that is you work with ecosystem partners. You leverage the scale of the platform. Right? We’re the largest global distributor at this point probably of of medicines. And so by able to then working with, you know, the best diagnostic companies, the cancer Grail detection company. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken this test. This is a test that I’ve been taking for five years. I’ve had everyone in my family take because there’s there’s cancer in my family.

What was the test? It’s called the the Gallery Test by Grail. It’s a blood test, and it can detect, you know, 50 to a hundred cancers, and it and it focuses specifically its best at, from a clinical standpoint, some of the harder to find cancers, prostate, pancreatic, ovarian cancer, and it’s a simple blood test. You know, we this blood test was thousands of dollars for the last few years. We were able to work directly with Grail, bring that test. I think it’s in market now in Hims and Hers at, $600.

And my hope is over the coming years, they’ll continue to come down to a few $100 where everybody could do this on an annual basis like going to the dentist. Right? It’s just check to see if there’s any early signs, any early protein indicators of stage one cancer tumors. So there’s an arc. Right? When the GLP-1s first came out, it was $2,000 list price. We applied incredible pressure to the drug companies. The current administration in The US did an amazing job, and thanks to the drug companies, they actually agreed to bring them down from the thousands of dollars to a 150 to $200 cash pay prices.

I mean, that is, like, completely transformative. It’s not something that’s really happened in pharmaceutical history that the blockbuster drug of the century gets cut by 80% in eighteen months. The reason for that, I think the reason it happened in part is because companies like us and consumers applied massive pressure to change the distribution model. Right? In eighteen months, the distribution model has completely changed in pharmaceuticals in The US. Instead of going through PBMs and insurance, they’re going straight to customers through platforms like ours at prices everyday people can afford.

And so there’s an arc to that price reduction, but I think for us, we wanna have the absolute best and also wanna be able to apply pressure to bring that cost down as much as we can.

I don’t know too much about Pill pack, to be totally honest. I I what I don’t believe is that the pharmacy fulfillment part of our business independently is a particularly valuable business.

that something that Hims would do? We spend a ton of time looking at that space, and and I’ve actually we did a partnership with Novo that was announced just a couple weeks I think where there’s a lot of interesting companies right now is in highly specialized levels of testing for clinical areas that are that are meaningfully unmet. Right? So you look at things like cardiovascular disease. Right? Still one of the number one killers. Most dads die of a heart attack. Yet a statin is, you know, 2¢ for me to manufacture.

And if you take a statin every day, then you won’t die of a heart attack, or you’re meaningfully less likely to die of a heart attack. Yet nobody does it. And so there’s biotech companies right now working on therapies where a single injection quarterly or a single injection annually can absolutely obliterate your cardiovascular risk. And if you can do something like that, you meaningfully curve that rate of death, and you get ahead on prevention for cardiovascular disease. Pre Novo, I think, is is another interesting one.

Right? It’s it’s how do we get ahead of detection for things like cancer and and early tumor detection. You know, my my dad, you know, had stage four colon cancer when he was 39. It then cost the health care system hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars, to have surgery and then treat him for many years with chemotherapy. Right? And then afterwards, the care involved to to kind of get him back to a steady state. The idea of an annual exam that can scan your body for early signs, early proteins through blood testing, or early actually imaging signs that can detect a millimeter size tumor is incredibly fascinating.

Now I think a lot of clinical people, and they’re smart, you know, believe something like that is not yet ready for mainstream, and it might not be. I kind of choose to be opportunistic in giving people the ability to make those trade offs for themselves. I take Pronovo annually, So, you know, I recommend it to my family. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. How much is Pre Novo? I think now it’s maybe about a thousand or $1,500 a year. Okay. That’s better than I thought. Yeah. And so I think and again, these are machines that cost $500,000 one time purchase to to buy, but then you’re charging, you know, a thousand or $2,000 a month or a year.

And so the idea that this cost could come down dramatically is very real. 500 machine capitalized over a decade, the cost could come down to something like $300 a year to do this test eventually. And that’s where my brain goes when I’m thinking about the future is what are the the Swiss cheese layers we can give people that together make up really great prevention, working backwards from what we know causes, you know, shortening of life and and health span.

You know, it’s a it’s a something that people have been talking about a lot. Actually, Daria was mentioning this recently. I think some of the most defensible businesses in the age of, you know, Anthropic and OpenAI are businesses that actually do something physical. They require actual specialization, and they require infrastructure. A huge part of what we do every single day is treat tens of thousands of patients with thousands of doctors that are specialized and licensed in every state or country in the world, and then actually help make people medicine.

Mean, this is a million square feet of pharmacy fulfillment. This is, you know, hundreds of pharmacists and robotic machines that are actually compounding treatments or fulfilling branded pharmaceuticals. So when I actually think about the most defensive businesses, the businesses that can thrive in the age of AI and actually be enabled by them are ones where the conversation of something like ChatGPT massively expands the funnel of people engaging in health and wellness, but then can be driven to a platform that actually connects them with the specialist and connects them with the products and actually can get that delivered to their door.

And, ultimately, I think we’re a combination of all of those businesses together. So, you know, I think there’s there’s a lot of opportunity with that funnel that opens up with things like Chateau Beatty.

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s similar to what you see on Google. I don’t think it’s gonna be all that much different, right? That you’ll be able to partner directly with Anthropic and ChatGPT and and find patients that are looking for certain services and then have handoffs to specialized implementations. Right? It’s it’s gonna be I I think there’s great opportunities to partner with all of these players.

You know, it hasn’t had particularly dramatic changes since, you know, some of these new AI companies have have grown. I think for us, a huge number of people that come to us are are first time patients interested in some of these care categories. And so they’re hearing about it through, you know, watching Fox News. They’re hearing about it through watching NFL on Thursday nights. They’re hearing about it from their friend who all of a sudden is feeling great, and the friend is talking about the treatments that they’re on or or the fact that they’re getting care from Hims and Hers.

So I think more and more for us, the brand and the the spend is moving towards channels where you’re talking about the opportunity to feel great. You’re not reliant on, you know, maybe the the AdWords, Google funnel that that you mentioned, I do think those businesses inevitably will have struggle in transitioning to some of the, you know, the chat based interfaces, but there will be ad networks that are built through those chat based interfaces that that eventually just replace them. So, ultimately, I’m not sure it will matter.

But for us, I think an increasing amount of spend is actually going towards just telling people about all of the new things Hims and Hers is doing, the fact that you can feel great, the fact that it’s affordable, and you can come check it out. And it’s it’s a lot of market creation both in The US and globally versus latent demand that you’re capturing through through some of these more streamlined channels. If

I would definitely sponsor Ferrari f one because I I’ve I’ve told my wife that if I were to have one job that wasn’t my current job, it’d be a Ferrari driver, but she did not really like that that answer. Do you think that would be a net

The Ferrari sponsorship? Yeah. At this point, probably not because I’m not sure we’re we’re live in every market with the penetration we would want where that that global footprint matters. I think eventually it would. I think eventually in the coming years, you know, World Cup and and global sponsorship opportunities actually do matter because, you know, this year was a a huge level of commitment to win internationally. I mean, we we did not dip our toe. I mean, we we acquired three or four companies. Did you acquire Eucalyptus

You know what? It it comes to be because you get to know the people really well. I’ve known Tim probably four or five years. I think he was the best operator overseas. No question. I mean, his understanding of the customer, his ability to build a team that just moves fast, experiments, is willing to take risks and fail. I mean, when I first met Tim, he was live in, six or seven markets, and it was all failing. And he was telling me how chaotic it was, and I was like, don’t know, man.

This sounds crazy. You’re in, like, Indonesia. You’re in Japan. You’re in all these different places. Like, is it gonna work? He’s like, I’m not sure, but we’re gonna try it. And then a year later, he’s like, okay. It didn’t work. We’re we’re, like, toning it back. We’re gonna focus here. Like, his humility and his willingness to experiment and test and learn is incredible. And because of that, they’ve just moved so much faster than everybody else. I mean, they’re the dominant player in Australia, dominant player in The UK, dominant player in Germany, quickly growing in Japan.

I mean, it’s just a phenomenal business. The power of what we built in The US from a cash flow standpoint has enabled us in the last four or five years to buy that business with pretty moderate dilution. Right? Because you can actually just fund the purchase of it off the balance sheet over the next couple of years, which is incredible. And so we have committed a huge amount of dollars in focus internationally because I just think the opportunity for the brand is pretty consistent, whether there’s a national system in in The UK or or not.

Definitely. You you there is a very fine line of driving so fast that you’re losing control. There’s no question about that. What I found, at least in running this business, is is if you don’t feel like you are getting close to that line, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. And so I do think that uncomfortable gut feeling where you’re constantly questioning, constantly evaluating, constantly tweaking the strategy or the tactics, that feeling is what success feels like. And so I’ve I’ve kind of taught my team that we’re gonna get really comfortable with that feeling.

We’re gonna get really comfortable sitting in that feeling and questioning and and reevaluating and pushing because I think that’s how you win. Right? Like, I was a rower in high school, and I remember, you know, my coach saying, the group of guys out there that is willing to be the most uncomfortable and in the most pain are gonna win this race. And and that’s actually true in that sport, and that’s true in in, you know, in most sports, and I didn’t think that’s true in business.

It’s like if you can put yourself in environments where you’re being aggressive but smart, taking the right bets but have a team that is bought into the mission and comfortable with that level of aggressive risk, and I think I think it’s the right formula. So to me, that’s what makes this fun.

In the early years, and and I think we still I still, you know, try to moderate this. With our business, like, we could launch so many things within, like, a month. Yeah. You could launch a skincare routine, or you could launch, like, a makeup brand, you could launch sleep vitamins, you could launch, like, a wearable device. You I mean, there’s just, like, anything people are doing in health and wellness could live in the Hims and Hers brand, which is pretty powerful and also extremely risky. Right?

Because if you if you do too much and you you move into the wrong areas, you you you waste a ton of resource. So in the early years, you know, I thought just having everything on the platform was how you win. And so we invested in skincare regimens, and we invested in vitamin supplements, and we invested in, you know, so many things that in retrospect were were fairly commodity products. And for pretty much the same price or even less, you could walk across the street to Walgreens and get something that was pretty much the same thing.

And I think that that was a massive mistake. You know, I think it was a it was a belief that just assortment won, and I think there’s a more nuanced perspective that the right assortment wins. And so we’re really careful about categories we enter, products we launch, to make sure that there are products and offerings that that are actually differentiated for people, that are hard for other people to receive and get get access to, and maybe that means it’s pharmaceutical grade. It’s manufactured in in a way that is very, very challenging to get quality, or there’s a level of personalization that is required in this care of treatment that makes it unique to you.

But when I think about some of the early d to c brands that launched, you know, they were selling commodity products, And those products capped out at, you know, 1,000,000,000 in revenue or a couple 100,000,000 in Facebook spend, and the curves were like this. And that’s my nightmare. You know? And and so, in their early years, made a lot of those mistakes and and try to make sure we we don’t do that again.

You know, I think what you gain confidence in with brand marketing over time is that consistency is required. So I think in the early years with brand marketing, as companies are growing, they throw some dollars. You know, let’s do an out of home campaign in New York because it’s like really cool. It’s like takeover subways, right, which we did a ton of. And they do it once, and everyone this team is so fucking excited because it’s so cool, and you can see it, and you take pictures of it, but you do it once.

And then, like, months go by, and and it gets taken off, and then that’s it because you did it, and it was fun and cool. And you look at the numbers and, like, yeah, maybe there’s, like, a little spike in New York City, maybe on this day. Like, you can’t really tell. Probably not, but you you’re hopeful. And then the next year, like, okay. What are we gonna do this year? Right? Like, that’s just, it’s a guaranteed way to just lose money. It’s a great way to feel good, and it’s super fun.

It’s, like, so much fun, and we’ve done ton of it, and it’s really fun. Like, that’s not a business strategy. I think in order to have brand marketing work, I think it has to be consistent. It has to be consistently random, if that makes sense. Like, you have to be appearing in different places for people in a randomized way but with consistency because it’s the multiple hits. Like, you have to be hit 10 different times in 10 different ways for all of a sudden that to say, hey.

There’s, a cultural zeitgeist association with Hims right now that that I need to pay attention to. Like, what are they doing that is showing up in so many ways in my life where your brand trust elevates, your cultural relevancy elevates? So it isn’t a one off thing. And I think in the early years, you you know, you hope it is. You try to track it, but it does require a level of of dollars. It requires a level of consistency. And, actually, you know, Kathy, our chief comms officer, told me this when we were interviewing, which I completely believe.

She’s like, the the thing early companies struggle with when it comes to communications and their brand is they get bored of saying the same thing, and then they move on to the next thing. Right? Like early companies, we’re excited. We’re young. We’re changing. So, like, here’s our vision, and here’s what we stand for. Then three months later, like, it’s changed up a little bit. I wanna say something different because I already said that thing in that podcast. Let me say something new in this new one.

And in fact, what makes great brands great is the fact that everybody knows why they exist, why they fight, who their customer is, what the value is they deliver, and it’s because they say the same damn thing in 20 different ways every single week. And so I think that’s one of the key parts about brand marketing or or comms in general is consistency, making sure that that message and that narrative is not changing out of which requires an immense amount of discipline. And in many ways, it’s like a lot less fun.

It’s much more of an engine. But over many, many years, I do think it it builds.

I think Hims and Hers will increasingly have a stronger perspective of what great health care looks like. And I think as we grow, we are building an understanding of patients at a scale that I don’t think most have. Right? When you think about the fact that we’re treating ten, twenty thousand patients a day, like, the largest health systems in the world are not treating 10 to 15,000 patients per day. There’s an immense amount of knowledge that’s being built around different types of patients, their demographics, their risk factors, their biomarkers, what medicines and treatments work, why, what side effects they have, how much they feel better, combination therapies that are beneficial.

Like, there’s just an immense amount of knowledge base growing where I think we’re gonna be able to start having stronger perspectives of what excellence looks like in health care. What do we believe the gold standard in preventative care is? Like, if you, Harry, wanna be the absolute healthiest 29 year old, right, and be ahead of the curve, what are the 10 things you should be doing? What are the tests you should be doing specifically for you? What are the the treatments, whether they’re holistic supplements or maybe sauna, right, that you should be doing?

And what’s that exact regimen and get ahead of it? And there you go. You’re just you’re gonna be a you’re gonna be gold standard. Right?

doing great. You’re doing great. And I think that’s actually the point of like, to me, that’s such a key part of the Hims and Hers brand is, like, everybody feels that way. Everyone feels so far away from optimal, and it’s really fucking hard to take the first step to have that confidence to to, like, make a change. And so most people that come to Hims and Hers are first time customers because I think we, as a brand, try really hard to empower you and say, hey, that first step is gonna be easy.

We’re gonna make it easy. It’s kinda like that old marine or or navy seal story of like, you make your bed in the morning. Right? Because when you make your bed in the morning, you’ve completed something, like a very tactical action. You’ve had success. There’s, like, positive adrenaline, and then from there, you’re gonna do other great things throughout the day. Like, Hims and Hers, I wanna make it so easy for everyone to take that first step in feeling great that that it empowers a lot of people to do so.

And from your your question, we’re gonna have a stronger opinion about what great actually looks like.

I think we are we are very close to that being a reality.

That’s capitalization. It requires two tangible things. So last year, we acquired your BioHealth, which is one of the the few at home blood collection devices. I have it right here on my desk. And this device costs just a couple bucks to manufacture, and you can click it on your arm, and it’s got 30 micro needles inside of it. Each of the micro needles smaller than an eyelash. So if you feel nothing, you click a button, you feel nothing, and then a small tube of blood gets extracted from your arm in about a minute or two.

You can then peel that off and you can mail it to New Jersey, which is where we have a lab processing facility, and we’ll have a couple others in the next year and two, and run a full panel, you know, 50 biomarkers, and it will cost us, like, almost nothing. Now today, if you go to to Quest or LabCorp and try to get that panel, cash pay maybe costs you a thousand bucks or $2,000. If you, you know, go online and go to different competitors, maybe it costs, like, 300 or $500 for that panel.

And and my my goal, my vision is, like, very quickly, I wanna give that away as a part of the Hims and Hers membership for free. Because if you can get a sense of those metrics and and I’m not talking about just, like, baseline metrics, like, you know, your cholesterol and the things that I’m actually talking about things that are even more sophisticated, like genetic predisposition risks, which, you know, very few people get access to or or cancer risks or polygenic risk stores. If you have a really accelerated risk of colon cancer, there’s things you should be doing that are different.

To me, that is the vision. A preventative front door that is near cost or free, and that requires us to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, which we’re doing right now, to totally verticalize this stuff and actually own the devices, the lab processing, and that fulfillment. But then a platform that says, here’s everything we know. Here’s what we can help you with. Give guidance and again, make that next step really, really easy.

That’s so right. Yeah. And I I think for us, I think that entry point and that data collection, it serves two purposes. One, most people just don’t even have access to this stuff. So they don’t even know if they’re, like, doing well. I’ll give you an example. One of my best friends, mid thirties, he’s trying to live healthy. He was telling me the other day how he’s running a lot. He looked at his cholesterol numbers, and they were they were, like, kind of out of whack.

So he’s, like, now starting to eat more salmon and going for a run. I’m like, oh, that’s great. Awesome. And then I told him, hey. Have you done testing for this specific genetic risk factor for heart disease? It’s called lipoprotein little a. He’s like, no. I’ve never done that test. So he ran he and did that test, and he came back, and he’s like, my number is, like, 450. I was like, well, that’s a problem because that number should be, like, under 70. And if it’s 450, it means there’s a pretty good chance you’re gonna have a heart attack at, like, 50 or 60.

And he looked at me. I’m like, do you have has anyone ever had a heart attack in your family? He’s like, well, my my dad died when he was 60, and my dad and my grandfather died at 55. Both have heart attacks. And, like, to me, that moment was why all of this matters. Because he went to his doctor. He went to a cardiologist because he was trying to do well. They gave him a set panel and blood tests, and his numbers were a little bit off, so he started to go for runs.

Great first step. What they didn’t test was a genetic predisposition marker that we now know is so much more important. And if you have that high genetic predisposition number, your cholesterol numbers need to be, like, amazing, not good. They have to be incredible, or you’re gonna have a heart attack. Like, there are so many therapies he should be starting now because he now has access to that number. That’s the kind of stuff I wanna give away for free. Like, that that level of information helps people actually, like, get preventative, not reactive.

And and put it on a care spectrum where if somebody wants to be aggressive, they can. If somebody wants to be conservative, they can. But I wanna give people information, and then I wanna give them choice and assortment and a doctor to help navigate that for a cost that that isn’t overwhelming.

One of the things I learned earliest in my career is if you can’t hire people that are smarter than you, you will fail. You know, I think what you gain confidence in with brand marketing over time is that consistency is required. Yeah. The whole thing is totally fucked. Right? If you look at the existing system in The US, almost nothing has to do with patient outcomes or patient happiness. Right? So many people make money. Everybody makes money, but none of them make money in any way that’s actually reflective of success of the customer or patient.

And I think that’s where our model is most powerful. Like, we only make money at Hims and Hers if you are happier and healthier, period. Because you pay us. You pay us to be healthier. If you don’t feel healthier, if you don’t feel happier, you stop paying us. And so our incentive is only aligned with with you. And we then fight behind the scenes the drug companies. We fight the diagnostic companies. We fight everybody, and we work with them, but we apply pressure to them to get the best stuff at the best price to bring it to you.

But ultimately, we only succeed if you succeed.

Well, for us, it’s not necessarily about medication. Right? Like, you will always need somebody to help quarterback your wealth and your health. Right? Like, as you grow, as you age, you’re always gonna wanna have somebody who’s an expert partner that’s available to you twenty four seven that you trust that can help you navigate how you feel in life. And and this changes. Right? Like, at different milestones, like, you might not be there yet, but in the ten years from now, though, things will be popping up all the time, that that trusted partner becomes so valuable.

But I don’t think that changes. And so that relationship that can last decades with Hims and Hers is what matters. Right? Like, me just getting you a specific treatment today and making the most money I can from you today, that actually isn’t what matters to me long term. Right? I’m 37. I’ve got, like, a multi decade perspective on how big this business can be. In order for it to reach that that maximum value, you have to build a brand that people trust to have with you for a very long time.

And that means often saying, hey. Right now, this treatment might not be for you, but we’re here for you when something else pops up, and here’s more information, and here’s more diagnostics, and here’s maybe a wearable device, and here’s some other habits and food and nutritional support to help you along the way.

Right right now, it’s the lab testing offering. Right now, it’s lab testing because we we offer it essentially at cost. We haven’t verticalized any of this infrastructure, so it costs us, you know, pretty much just as much money as we we sell it for. And again, it’s because I believe the loss leader value to the patient is incredibly important. And that margin will continue to be terrible because what we’re gonna do is continue to reduce the cost as we verticalize it, and then actually reduce the cost to the consumer.

So that that will always be, I think, platform benefit from my standpoint where we try to make nothing on, but give patients information and access, and and that ultimately can be really transformative for them.

I think a lot of people are still trying to understand why we are fighting so hard. Right? People see us in the headlines all the time. Recently, seeing us in the headlines for for GLP-1s and, you know, with drug company conversations. And

Yeah. I I think when it comes to Hims as a disruptor, we are actually disrupting. I think we are pushing buttons that structurally change how people get access to care in this country. If you look in the last eighteen months, like we were talking about, the most important medicines of the century got cut by 80%. Not only did they get cut in cost, but now they’re available through consumer channels at prices everyone can afford. I think we played a part of that intentionally. Right? We applied massive pressure, regulatory pressure, consumer pressure.

We leveraged, you know, hundreds of thousands of patients to raise their voices to say, hey. These medicines could save our lives. Like, let’s actually get them to us in ways we can afford. And coverage is now expanding dramatically, and the prices are tanking. And so I think our willingness to be at the forefront of disruption and push on behalf of consumers, I think, causes friction.

I don’t I don’t know if I you know, I won’t talk specifically about any other brand because I’m not sure their strategy, but but I would say, you know, in order to actually disrupt the system, you have to break part of the system. And and I think our

I think we’re in the middle right now of breaking how health care is distributed entirely. So instead of going through the PBMs and then through insurance and then through reimbursements, all of that complexity that nobody understands in The US. I don’t think any of it makes sense. All of it, or as much of it as possible, will go through consumer channels like Hims and Hers, where you can pick up your phone, have on demand access, have total price transparency, have complete choice of which doctor, which specialists, which treatment, complete information access, and then control.

The system in The US is entirely paternalistic. Right? You get treated with whatever they they they want to give you, and and the incentives and reimbursements and costs are so convoluted that it’s it’s wildly overwhelming. And so when I think of every other industry we love, food delivery, financial services, banking, retail, everything is simple. It’s on demand from your mobile device, price transparency, customer choice. Yet the one thing that is the most important part of our life doesn’t have any of those elements, and it’s the biggest industry in The US.

It’s where we spend the most money too, and so I think that’s entirely gonna change. And so I don’t think Hims is a d to c company. I think Hims is disrupting how health care is delivered in a in a consumer focused fashion. And and I think we’re in the midst of that change. I think people are are just coming around to it, you’re starting to see it with the GLP-1s as a prime example. But I think in the next five years, it’s gonna accelerate dramatically.

I don’t think it’s relevant, actually. When you look at the patients coming to Hims and Hers today, the patients starting their health care journey, the majority of them do not have legacy data and systems within old EMR platforms. Right? They they moved to a new city. They moved to New York, and they’re 22, and they’re like, I don’t have a doctor, yet I’m feeling a little sad. What do I do? Right? And their their first time entry into the health care system is Hims and Hers.

And so the the wave of of health care for the future, for the next twenty years, for the fifty years after that, is gonna be a patient population that’s starting today. And that’s why I think, you know, you have to you have to build a relationship early. You have to have an assortment of care that starts young for people so that you can give them an example of what great looks like and then build with

years.

Yeah. It’s really challenging. I I I I think the current administration is doing an amazing job on that issue. I really do. Right? Like, the the push to eat real food, the push to normalize, the fact that all of the ingredients on these labels is garbage, it’s chemicals, the push to educate people to actually see what is good for you and look at those labels and and require food companies to disclose it and to force changes on high processed foods or corn syrup use, like, it’s poison.

You know, my wife is my wife is French, and so when when we’re visiting her family overseas, I look at the labels. It’s crazy. I mean, you know, when you look at a french fried bag of in a french grocery store, it’s potatoes, and it’s olive oil, and that’s it. You know? You you go to Safeway here in The US, and you look at it, and it’s 40 different things. So I think there’s a huge problem with the food industry. I think the the government applying pressure and regulation there is a wonderful idea for people because undoubtedly that’s a massive part of the obesity epidemic in the country and also probably the mental health epidemic and many, many other things.

It’s so difficult. I mean, we’ve got three little boys and we try to feed them well, so we’ll buy like a carton of organic blueberries. Right? And that carton is expensive. Organic blueberries in San Francisco might be, like, $7. And I’ll I’ll open it, I’ll put it in front of the boys for breakfast, and they’ll grab handfuls, and it’ll be done in fifteen seconds. Right? And and so the idea that, you know, healthy food costs this much and is consumed that easily is a real challenge right now.

And so anything people can be doing to eat locally, to have local farms, to to make sustainability in their communities easier and better, I think is is is all positive.

I think I was too slow to force the company to invest in completely disrupting their team processes with AI.

I think customer care, provider quality, all patient interactions. I think we we were a year or two too slow on on totally changing the model of how patients interact with the platform.

Retention going down.

There are always ways to optimize efficiency on acquisition. There are always new channels, new brand campaigns, new new growth avenues. But if you don’t have a sticky customer and for some reason they’re becoming less sticky, your product market fit, your patient happiness, your customer happiness is going in the wrong direction.

At scale, I think, with scale, with assortment, with brand value, new channels become unlocked, new efficiency grows, leverage accelerates with assortment. It often only goes one way, but I don’t think always. Other than

Mhmm.

I would tell myself to trust my instincts as we continue to build and get bigger and bigger, continue to trust my instincts, and also remember that it’s gonna be a long journey and the ups and downs are gonna come and go, but that the persistence is gonna be most important.

You know, there’s a there’s a something I watched once where they asked a whole bunch of little kids what their absolute perfect afternoon was, and these are, like, two, three, four, five year olds. And the perfect afternoon was, all these kids answered the same way, just playing with their mom and dad. Just, like, sitting with blocks and playing with their mom and dad or drawing with their mom and dad or or something with their mom and dad. And I don’t think, you know, when you’re exhausted and you’re a parent and you’re trying to do everything and pulled so many different ways, you realize that actually all the kids wanna do is just have you present and truly present.

And so my greatest advice, I think, would be to to try really, really hard to just play with them. Like, play. Like, get down on your on your knees, on your butt in whatever they’re doing, and just ask what they’re doing and ask if you can do it with them because they light up. Because in parenting, like, it’s it’s hard to actually make time for that, but I found that that that’s that’s really the most important and valuable stuff.

Appreciate you having me. Good