The Hims Hers Drama

"Healthcare" company loses over $200 million in stock value after CEO offers to hire college protesters. Then he walks it back.

A digital healthcare company I’d never heard of until Friday called Hims and Hers lost over $200 million in stock value after the CEO Tweeted this on May 1:

Moral courage > College degree

If you’re currently protesting against the genocide of the Palestinian people & for your university’s divestment from Israel, keep going. It’s working. There are plenty of companies & CEOs eager to hire you, regardless of university discipline. Apply here.

A day later the stock did this:

Billed as a “digital healthcare startup,” Hims & Hers started in 2017 and went public in 2021 with a valuation of $1.6 billion. It was originally started to help guys with guy problems like balding and erectile dysfunction. Men could meet discreetly with doctors on-line and then have prescriptions shipped to their door, avoiding embarrassment at Walgreen’s when the pharmacist yells out “Viagra!”

Hims has grown and evolved and now men can order meds to lose weight, grow hair, have more/better/longer sex, fix their anxiety and their finger nails, and improve their skin. Among many other things. But mostly fix their fading boners. (There are a lot of links for that on the site.)

The company quickly introduced a women’s site at a separate url: forhers.com. A lot of the same stuff . . . lose weight, grow hair, have better sex. It just has more feminine vibes. More talk of self-care. But basically they’re selling meds. A lot of them.

I think we need fewer meds, not more. I’m not alone in that, I know. It’s well-tread territory here and everywhere and most notably at present in Abigail Shrier’s book “Bad Therapy,” which focuses on the over therapizing and medicating of children. But could easily be applied to adults as well.

Yes, some drugs are necessary. I know that. I’m taking antibiotics right now for a sinus infection. I’m grateful antibiotics exist.

But we are more medicated and more unhappy than ever. It is easy to see that a pill for everything is not working. But Hims and Hers doesn’t want you to know, or even ponder, that. Their business model depends on you wanting more drugs to fix your problems.

It’s quite a list of depression-fighting generics on forhers.com. And you can get those heavy duty meds — wham bam thank you — prescribed by a tele-health zoom doc. What could go wrong?

There’s plenty more drugs available through Hims and Hers — what ails you? Anxiety? Depression? Your weight? Want a sex gummy for libido? You can get it all. No problem. Don’t exercise or get outside or simply learn to accept an aging body. Take a pill! We have them all right here at Hims and Hers!

I don’t love my thinning old lady hair. But I work daily on accepting my age and being ok with being 55. Which I guess means thinner hair.

---

The company markets itself as follows: "We’re on a mission to help the world feel great through the power of better health."

But are they really? The company pushes products containing finasteride and minoxidil to females. Finasteride isn't FDA-approved for females and for good reason. According to the Mayo Clinic: “Women and children should not use this medicine.”

Why?

Finasteride is not safe for women who are pregnant as it can harm an unborn baby and, because of its effect on DHT, could cause issues with male genital development. According to experts, even touching a crushed or broken Finasteride could potentially get into your bloodstream and cause adverse effects.

Ok fine, I’m not getting pregnant. I’d be fine taking it. But it’s not marketed to post child bearing women on the site. 2 out of 3 of these ladies can definitely still have children.

The company’s own website has a blog post that says that Finasteride isn’t safe for women.

And yet . . . they continue to market it to women. (h/t to the X account PSSDNetwork for much of this info.)

Forgive me if I’m not so inclined to believe that the CEO Andrew Dudum is one to stand on principle. He’s selling a hair growth drug to women that on his own site’s blog says is not safe for women!

And so . . . color me not surprised, that post stock drop, Dudum did some backtracking. His please don’t hate me Tweet stream amounts to: I was misunderstood, I’m of Palestinian descent, I support free speech but of course not violence, I believe in peaceful protest, every student should feel safe on campus blah blah and please don’t be mad at me or my company.

It’s all well and good to have an opinion that seems controversial — edgy! — and might garner you some clout for being oh so brave, but oh no when it actually garners you some real impact as in financial.

I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who is willing to market gobs of drugs to people via the internet and zoom doctors — including drugs known to be unsafe to the people they are being marketed to — walks back a position he seemed to hold in earnest but then when it has an impact on his company’s stock price it seems less like a good idea.

And I’m not. Not really.

Companies and CEO’s don’t need to take stands. I don’t care what the In-N-Out Burger CEO thinks about Israel or student protesters. And I don’t care what King Sooper’s thinks about women’s reproductive healthcare. I just want to be able to buy fresh produce.

I believe in “normie capitalism” as I’ve written about on more than one occasion. Make a great product, market it in an inspiring manner. Appeal to as many people as possible.

Or, take a stand. And keep taking it. As a company. As a leader. As a person.

I started my little challenger brand XX-XY Athletics with a point of view: women and girls deserve their own sports and spaces.

70% of Americans agree even if they aren’t willing to say so.

Yet.

I think we can coax them out of the shadows.

At any rate, if they reject us, we aren’t changing our position. We’ll either make it. Or we won’t.

I don’t agree with Dudum’s initial tweet, but I can appreciate the perspective. But don’t be a wuss and walk it back at the first sign of blowback.

Stand by it. Don’t recoil because it hurts a little. Principles aren’t principles if you abandon them at the first sign of distress. Those are just slogans.

Stand up or don’t. But don’t be a tagline spewing “activist,” pretending to have principles for clout but in reality, having none at all.