May 11, 2018 · 28m · 20vc
20VC: Hims' Andrew Dudum on The Scaling Playbook of The Fastest Growing Mens Wellness Brand, How To Be Truly Innovative In Today's World of Online Marketing & Raising at a $200m Valuation within Year 1
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The 20 Minute VC, host Harry Stebbings speaks with Andrew Dudum, co-founder and CEO of Hims and general partner at Atomic. Dudum shares insights on innovative direct-to-consumer marketing, hyper-lean team execution, validating distribution through venture builder models, and navigating early-stage startup valuations.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 31.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 2.7 Guest teaching 3.8 Guest disagreement 1.2 Harry pushing back 1.7
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 15:56 Rejection of M&A lockout premise
Andrew firmly rejects Harry's suggestion that a $200M valuation limits exit options, reframing Hims as a high-margin pharmaceutical brand rather than a traditional DTC business.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 15:32 Challenging the $200M valuation growthHarry directly presses Andrew on whether raising at a $200M valuation within six months of launching over-extends the company and eliminates acquisition options.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 15:56 Pharma subscription economics re-educationAndrew thoroughly breaks down Hims' recurring prescription revenue and pharmaceutical gross margins, compelling Harry to admit he was thoroughly proven wrong and eating humble pie.
Harry holds his own ▶ 15:32 Probing valuation multiples and exit ceilingsHarry demonstrates keen venture capital acumen by challenging how fast valuation growth impacts future financing rounds and M&A flexibility.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrew Dudum on the Founding and Mission of Hims | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Harry sets up friendly introductory questions regarding Hims' founding story and Andrew's prior startup learnings. Andrew explains the market gap in men's health and lessons around micro-optimization from Everalbum without any friction. | |
| Navigating DTC Marketing and Creating Proprietary Inventory | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks insightful questions about CAC inflation and channel sustainability across DTC brands. Andrew gently reframes Harry's question on migration timing by arguing that if a brand waits for channel fatigue to migrate, it is already too late, advocating instead for proprietary inventory creation. | |
| Real-World Touchpoints and Customer Conversion Science | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Harry displays domain knowledge regarding mattress DTC stats and incumbent dynamics like Gillette versus Harry's, pressing Andrew for exact touchpoint metrics. Andrew declines to share proprietary numbers and re-educates on demographic-specific conversion science, leading Harry to playfully self-deprecate. | |
| Scaling Operations, Hiring Philosophy, and Valuation Considerations | 4 | 7 | 3 | 5 | Harry directly challenges Hims' $200M valuation achieved in under six months, asking if it prices the company out of potential M&A options. Andrew forcefully dismantles this premise by explaining Hims' pharmaceutical-grade margins and subscription retention, forcing Harry to admit he was eating humble pie. | |
| The Atomic Venture Builder Model and Distribution Testing | 3 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Harry asks sharp questions about Atomic's venture builder model and return distributions. Andrew explicitly corrects Harry's assumption that 90% of Atomic projects generate strong returns, clarifying that the vast majority are killed during early distribution testing. | |
| Quickfire Round: Leadership Insights and Future Vision | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | A standard, highly collaborative quickfire round covering leadership, book recommendations, and Silicon Valley culture. Neither host nor guest displays combativeness or pushback. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Hims has raised over $45M in venture capital funding
“That's raised over forty-five million dollars in VC funding from some of the very best in the business, including Thrive Capital, Forerunner Ventures, IVP, Redpoint, and SV Angel, just to name a few.”
Dudum: Startups must balance micro-optimization with tracking macro platform shifts
“One of the areas that we really got good at with that company was small team iteration and market testing. We were constantly testing our positioning, our marketing, our channels, our price points, the demographics of the audiences. And weighing and balancing …”
Dudum: The era of building DTC brands on Instagram is over
“The days of, and I hear this a lot, the days of building brands on Instagram, I actually think are far gone.”
Dudum: DTC brands should create unmonetized marketing inventory instead of bidding
“Create your own inventory. Don't bid on it, right? So go find inventory that doesn't exist. That isn't being monetized where companies are owning very valuable real estate or very valuable time or mind share and work with them.”
Hims advertises in SF Giants bathrooms and thousands of gym locker rooms
“When you look at HIMSS, you know, we're in a lot of basic channels, the Facebook, Instagram, TV, and things that are very common, but you'll also find us in thousands of gym locker rooms. You'll find us all of the bathrooms at the SF Giants.”
Dudum: Digital saturation forces DTC brands into physical world marketing
“The reality is, is it is so easy to create a brand digitally today that your customers need to see you. And this is traditional marketing one-on-one, right? You need X touch points for your brand to be digested and thus purchased to be made, right? I think in …”
Hims launched with five employees and scaled with only twenty staff
“When I look back at HIMSS, when we launched the company, there were five people. There were five employees on November first when we launched the company. Those five employees have been working on the brand for about 18 months, and just up until a month or two…”
Dudum: Hims ships tens of thousands of product boxes per day
“We are shipping tens of thousands of boxes a day.”
Dudum: Startups should scale marketing and distribution, never headcount
“I don't know if I believe there's ever a time to pour fuel on people. I believe there's time to pour fuel on marketing or business development or partnerships or different distribution channels, but I actually think that's very different from people. So I thin…”
Dudum: Hims has pharmaceutical margins, unlike traditional DTC businesses
“You also have a margin structure that is fundamentally different from every direct consumer business, because essentially this is a big pharmaceutical company.”
Hims prototype hit $1M ARR in five weeks on $50K spend
“We put maybe 50,000 dollars into it and we did zero to a million dollars in recurring revenue in five weeks. And this was a prototype we had built over two or three days on a weekend.”
Atomic prototypes 20 to 25 startups annually, incubating three to four
“You know, we traditionally at Atomic will prototype anywhere from 20 to 25 companies per year, and we'll build three to four.”
Dudum: Pixar's Creativity, Inc. inspired Atomic and Hims' organizational structure
“My favorite book is Creativity, Inc. It's a phenomenal book about the way in which Pixar structures its organization, its teams, to enable as much inspiration, as much creativity as possible, and essentially to destruct any bureaucracy and processes that might…”
Dudum: Silicon Valley is excessively arrogant about just building websites
“The one thing that irks me, and I think a lot of people is, is the arrogance that the Valley has. And somebody once told me, you know, at the end of the day, we're just building websites. And that's true, right? We are just building websites.”