Hims & Hers Health was founded in November 2017, and, since that time, the company has evolved substantially via exceptional execution of its business.

In future articles, we will walk through this evolution; however, today, we will spend time considering the company's story prior to founding, which is inherently a story of its founder and CEO, Andrew Dudum, whose personality and character has driven the evolution and execution of the Hims business.

Andrew Dudum attended the University of Pennsylvania where he studied management and economics. At UPenn, he was also a part of the Wharton Venture Initiation Program and the Venture Capital and Private Equity Club, both of which foreshadowed his early career path following his undergraduate studies.

Following those studies, Dudum moved to the west coast where, in 2013, he co-founded and operated Atomic, which is a cross between Y Combinator and Founders Fund, and serves to incubate startup ideas and ultimately scale those ideas through funding and operational support.

Around 2017, four years after founding Atomic, Dudum decided to take one of the ideas that had been incubating in Atomic and launch it as a standalone company that he would run as CEO. This is what would ultimately become Hims & Hers Health, which subsequently went public in January of 2021.

Dudum’s backstory is principally important because it sheds light on the nature of Hims’ collective character.

A business, like any organization, will be a reflection of its founder’s psychology. That psychology will be imbued into the way the business operates, and today, we can see Andrew Dudum’s analytical and data-driven roots in the way that Hims operates:

For example, in order to execute Hims’ exceptional marketing programs, which lead to consistent, profitable customer acquisition, Hims must leverage data science, AI/ML, and data ops broadly to capture customers faster and more efficiently than its competitors. And Hims has done just this, growing its market share consistently since going public, as the chart below illustrates. As of 2023, Hims was taking 54% of all new customers across primary telehealth providers, according to Bloomberg Second Measure data.

This is just one element of Hims that has been executed masterfully and is reflective of CEO Andrew Dudum’s abilities as a data-driven operator.

Ultimately, grasping the founding story of Hims not only illuminates Andrew Dudum's visionary leadership but also reveals the strategic foundations that propelled the company to an impressive $1.4 billion in profitable sales in a remarkably short time.