Hims

Roman/Hims for maternal health: build a 'super baby' supplement service

Wilkinson pitches a DTC maternal-health business modeled on Hims/Roman: blood work plus scheduled supplements (DHA/fish, B vitamins, iron) for pregnant mothers, marketed on the fear-hook of avoiding bad outcomes while promising a smarter, healthier baby. He offered to invest his own money.

“There's a huge opportunity to basically do like Roman or Hims but for maternal health. So you do blood work, supplements, they get delivered on a schedule, and it's about building like a super baby.”

Steal thisLaunch a DTC maternal-health brand — blood work plus scheduled prenatal supplements — sold on the fear-hook of protecting and optimizing the baby.

A 'Hims for testosterone' D2C brand around a taboo topic

Shaan urges incubating a TRT subscription company, copying how Hims and Ro built trusted consumer brands around taboo topics like erectile dysfunction and balding via D2C Facebook advertising. He thinks the TRT market is even larger.

“You peaked on day one of this TRT subscription company because you see what Hims and Ro have done where they took the same thing, a taboo topic like erectile dysfunction or, you know, early, early balding, and they basically created a top, like, consumer brand that built trust, and they went crazy building a D2C brand on, you know, through Facebook and advertising around that topic. And this is, I think, an even better, uh, business because it is— I think the market is actually larger for something like this.”

Steal thisTake a taboo health topic, build a trusted D2C brand with Facebook ads, and subscribe customers like Hims/Ro did.

Decouple pharma R&D from the consumer brand

Suli predicts a next generation of consumer health brands (like Hims and Curology, but for diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure) that own the brand and customer experience while someone else does the R&D.

“What if you could kind of decouple those things? So somebody else is doing the research and development, but you're building the consumer brand and consumer experience to go do that thing.”

Steal thisBuild a consumer brand on top of off-the-shelf medical R&D for serious chronic conditions.

Hook the customer, then sell them everything: the Hims playbook

Sam argues egg-freezing startup Lilia and influencer-lender Carrot should land a customer on one product, then expand the catalog — the way Hims went from Viagra to hair loss to testosterone.

“once you get this customer on the hook, there's loads of products that you could sell them. In the same way Hims started with Viagra and now is doing hair loss, and then now they're thinking about doing testosterone, doing X, and then doing Y, whatever.”

Steal thisAcquire customers with one sticky product, then cross-sell an expanding catalog into the same trusting audience.

Product vs distribution: great products die, bad ones crush

Sam states the show's recurring distribution lesson — plenty of great products die for lack of distribution while mediocre products win on distribution — using Hims reselling generic Viagra with cute branding as the example.

“In reality, that's not the truth because there's way more great— there's a ton of great products that die because they have no distribution, and there's a ton of shit products that crush because their distribution is amazing.”