Andrew Dudum, cofounder of San Francisco-based online pharmacy Hims & Hers, a seller of wellness products for men and women – including hair loss and erectile dysfunction pills – is now a billionaire.
Hims & Hers posted strong quarterly earnings and announced a recent deal to sell a popular weight loss drug sent the company’s stock soaring.
The company confirmed on April 29 that Hims & Hers struck a partnership with the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk to sell its popular weight loss drug Wegovy through Hims & Hers’ online pharmacy. That makes it one of just three telehealth providers now able to sell the popular drug. (Novo Nordisk makes both Wegovy and Ozempic; Ozempic was developed for patients with type 2 diabetes).
The company’s stock has rocketed up 73% since the announcement, reversing a dramatic tumble that followed a February decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to stop telehealth companies like Hims & Hers from making compound versions of Novo Nordisk’s weight loss drug. Companies including Hims & Hers were allowed to manufacture and sell the drugs after a sudden boom in their popularity led to shortages of the key ingredient, semaglutide.
The recent rally has boosted the net worth of 36-year-old Dudum, a serial entrepreneur who helped launch the company in 2017 and has run it ever since as CEO, to $1.1 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates. Nearly all his wealth is wrapped up in Hims & Hers stock and options: Dudum owns 18.6 million shares, or 8% of the company’s stock, and 2.4 million stock options. He also has an estimated $80 million from exercising around 6 million Hims & Hers stock options and selling the shares. More than half of these sales were since May 2024, when Hims & Hers began to sell weight loss drugs. Dudum did not respond to a request for comment from Forbes regarding his net worth.
A San Francisco native, Dudum attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of business as an undergraduate before cofounding the startup studio Atomic Ventures in 2012 with one of his Wharton classmates, Jack Abraham. Using hundreds of millions of dollars in capital supplied annually by investors including billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, Dudum and his partners have helped build some 17 different startups, including residential marketplace Bungalow and Hims & Hers, which they launched as “Hims” in 2017.
“We were excited about how men interacted with the healthcare system,” Dudum explained to Forbes in 2018. By that point, Hims had already raised $90 million at a reported $500 million valuation. “I don’t think anyone expected how fast this would grow,” he said then. Initially started as a men’s wellness platform offering easy-access prescriptions for things like hair loss and erectile dysfunction, Hims expanded into birth control and other products for women in 2018. (The company renamed itself Hims & Hers in 2021 when it went public on the New York Stock Exchange.)
Hims & Hers trumpets its convenience. It’s a marketing machine: Last year, the company spent nearly half of its $1.5 billion in revenue on marketing. Its message: Instead of going to see a doctor in person, customers can get access to prescription drugs and medicines by filling in a medical intake form and then undergoing an examination online by a medical professional to check their eligibility. “No waiting room. No awkward appointment,” is how Hims advertises its popular hair loss pills.
Customers will follow this approach to get access to Wegovy, which is already for sale on Hims & Hers’ website for a list price of $599 per month. It’s also available at two other competing online pharmacies–Ro and LifeMD–for a $499 monthly subscription. This is a significant discount to the drug’s $1,350 retail price for customers whose insurance doesn’t cover the medication.
In a video posted to X after the Novo Nordisk announcement on April 29, Dudum described the partnership as a “long-term collaboration that combines our tech enabled, holistic, people-first approach with Novo’s medical innovation.” He continued: “It’s an exciting moment for anyone who believes, like we do, that it should just be easier and more affordable and seamless to get your hands on care built for you as individuals.”
This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
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