Introduction

My guest today is Andrew Dudum, founder of hims & hers. Hims and hers is a telehealth company that sells personal care products, subscriptions and and over-the-counter drugs online. We discuss our current healthcare system, what customer transparency really means, his fundraising strategy and what led him to take his company public via SPAC.

One book that inspired Andrew is:

Creativity Ink. by Ed Catmull

Questions I ask Andrew:

1. What attracted you to entrepreneurship?
2. What was the insight or aha moment that led you to found hims & hers?
3. How did you think about the competitive landscape when building hims & hers?
4. What categories did you start with? How did you think about product / category extension in the early days?
5. Did you always know you were going to be a brand that is in many categories?
6. What was your approach to hiring and building your team?
7. Many of the products you sell people don't really want to talk about or it's uncomfortable to talk about i.e. hair loss, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation. How do you think about building community and a safe space for customers to talk about these things?
8. What type of emotion do you want your customers to feel when they use your products?
9. What was your approach to fundraising?
10. Always make sure you had money in the bank
11. Why did you decide to fundraise?
12. What was the part of your business that was difficult get investors over the hump - what was the biggest reason they passed (for the few who passed :)?
13. Why did you decide to go public? What was the reason you decided to do a SPAC?
14. What's the future of hims & hers?
15. What's one thing you would change about venture capital?
16. What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that inspired you professionally?
17. What's the best piece of advice you've received?
18. What's one piece of advice that you have for founders currently building?