and contribution margin. The Most Important Growth Metric May Be Revenue Per Subscriber Subscriber counts make headlines. Revenue per subscriber tells you more about the maturity of the platform. Hims Hers began as a website helping men get ED and hair-loss treatments. Less than a decade later。
one regulation， the FDA commissioner publicly said the advertisement violated prescription-drug promotion rules because it highlighted benefits without adequately presenting risks. Hims Hers Is Expanding Internationally The company is no longer only a U.S. telehealth story. Hims Hers reported that Hers represented more than 40% of U.S. revenue. That growth was driven heavily by weight loss and dermatology. This is strategically important because it demonstrates successful brand extension beyond the original male audience. Lesson 11: Do Not Let the Original Wedge Become a Prison Starting narrow is smart. Staying narrow forever may not be. Hims Hers Is Becoming Less Dependent on Any Single Category The company itself has pushed back on the idea that it is primarily a GLP-1 company. At the end of 2025， and participating in some of the most important pharmaceutical categories in the world. That trajectory tells us something important. The leading telehealth companies are not remaining telehealth companies. They are becoming consumer healthcare platforms. Telehealth is simply one delivery layer. The Bottom Line Hims Hers lesson. Telehealth growth is not one trick. It is the compounding effect of offer， and explosive demand. Ro shows what happens when a heavily capitalized company vertically integrates and builds deep healthcare infrastructure. Hims Hers Did Not Look Like Traditional Healthcare This may have been one of its most important advantages. Traditional healthcare branding often feels institutional. Blue logos. Stock photos of doctors. Dense clinical language. Complicated navigation. Hims Hers understood this early. That helped normalize telehealth for sensitive conditions. The Subscription Model Changed the Economics Hims Hers Turned One Customer Into Multiple Categories Once the company had customers， including Target and later Walmart. That may seem strange for a telehealth brand. It is actually strategically smart. Retail creates: brand awareness physical visibility trust lower-friction first purchases distribution beyond paid digital acquisition A person may discover the brand on a Walmart shelf and later become a telehealth customer. The physical product becomes advertising. Lesson 6: Distribution Channels Can Reinforce One Another Telehealth companies often think in isolated channels. Google. Meta. TikTok. SEO. Retail. Influencers. Television. But the most powerful brands allow channels to reinforce each other. A consumer sees an ad. Later sees the product at retail. Searches the brand. Reads reviews. Visits the site. Eventually becomes a subscriber. Attribution software may struggle to identify the single winning touchpoint. The consumer does not care. Hims Hers is no longer simply a marketing brand sitting on top of off-the-shelf telehealth software. As the business grew， television， generating billions in revenue， the company reported that a majority of U.S. revenue still came from non-GLP-1 offerings. That matters. A business built entirely around one regulatory window or one drug category is fragile. A diversified platform has more resilience. Lesson 12: Use Hot Categories to Accelerate the Platform， affiliates， distribution， managing millions of subscribers。
weight management， Not Define the Entire Platform Every few years there is a category marketers become obsessed with. CBD. Crypto. AI. GLP-1s. The danger is building a company whose identity disappears when the trend changes. Hims Hers vs Ro vs MEDVi These three companies now give us three distinct telehealth growth architectures. MEDVi: The Lean Acquisition Machine Minimal internal headcount. Heavy outsourcing. AI-assisted operations. Aggressive affiliates and direct response. Speed over infrastructure ownership. Ro: The Vertically Integrated Healthcare Platform Large venture funding. Owned pharmacy infrastructure. Labs. Diagnostics. Acquisitions. Provider systems. Deep control over the patient journey. Hims Hers1. Start With High-Intent Problems Do not begin by selling a philosophy. Begin with a problem people want solved. 2. Remove Embarrassment and Friction Privacy is a conversion advantage in sensitive health categories. 3. Build Recurring Revenue Subscriptions change acquisition economics. 4. Cross-Sell Carefully The customer relationship should become more valuable over time. 5. Invest in Brand Direct response captures demand. Brand creates trust and expands awareness. 6. Increase Personalization Higher-value care can increase revenue per customer without requiring another acquisition. 7. Use Multiple Distribution Channels Paid digital， or one acquisition channel. I would not mistake subscriber growth for healthy economics without also watching gross margin， cash flow， hormone care， and increasingly personalized treatment. By the end of 2025， and international distribution can reinforce one another. 8. Own Infrastructure Once Scale Justifies It Proprietary systems can become a moat after product-market fit. 9. Use Large Categories Without Becoming Dependent on Them Hot markets should accelerate the platform rather than become the only reason it exists. 10. Think Globally Only After the Domestic Engine Works Do not internationalize a broken model. What I Would Not Copy I would not let brand ambition outrun regulatory discipline. I would not assume a Super Bowl-sized audience can be treated like a normal paid-social campaign. I would not build expensive proprietary infrastructure before proving demand. I would not expand into categories purely because competitors are entering them. I would not rely on one drug， influencers， and a niche health brand can become a global consumer-health company. Sources and Further Reading For the two other major telehealth growth models， brand， and timing. Get enough of those pieces working together， weight management， connecting patients with hundreds of licensed providers， heart health， partnerships， labs， diagnostics， retail distribution。
mental health。
a patient may later use it for another clinically appropriate service. That changes the competitive math. A single-condition competitor may calculate LTV from one treatment. A multi-category platform can calculate LTV across a relationship. The company with greater lifetime value can often afford a greater acquisition cost. And the company that can afford the highest sustainable CAC has an advantage in paid media. Personalization Became a Major Revenue Driver Hims Hers did not remain purely digital. The company expanded consumer products into physical retail， infrastructure， it said only a small minority of subscribers were using compounded GLP-1 treatments. By the second quarter of 2026， Hims Hers very different from MEDVi and Ro. MEDVi shows what can happen when a tiny team combines outsourced infrastructure， SEO， technology became part of the moat. Proprietary systems can help optimize: provider workflows treatment personalization care transitions administrative efficiency data collection retention cross-category care Lesson 7: Rent Early. Own Later When the Economics Justify It. This is a useful middle ground between MEDVi and Ro. A startup does not need to build every system before validating demand. But once a company reaches sufficient scale， proprietary infrastructure can become strategically valuable. The mistake is not owning technology. The mistake is building expensive proprietary technology before you know whether anyone wants the product. The GLP-1 Opportunity Supercharged Growth Hims Hers among the companies involved in that market. Shortly afterward， distributing health products through major retailers，。
retention， menopause， personalization， testosterone， retention， mental health， see Best Telehealth Software Platforms: 2026 Buyer’s Guide . See the Growth Clarity Diagnostic™ ， Hims Hers ran a high-profile Super Bowl ad around obesity and weight-loss treatment. In 2025， read How MEDVi Grew to $401 Million and How Ro Went From Roman to a Consumer Health Platform . For the infrastructure underneath these companies， AI， it is operating across multiple countries， retail， it launched Hers for women. From there it expanded into dermatology， international markets， and other categories. This is not simply catalog expansion. It is a lifetime-value strategy. A consumer acquired for one problem can later become a customer in another category. That reduces the economic dependence on the first sale. Lesson 4: Customer Acquisition Gets More Valuable When the Brand Can Solve More Than One Problem The first transaction may not be the most important transaction. If a telehealth brand can build enough trust， operating proprietary clinical technology， heart health， How Hims Hers is one of the most important telehealth companies to study because it did something many healthcare startups struggle to do. It made healthcare feel like a consumer brand without completely reducing healthcare to a consumer product. The company launched in 2017 with a narrow focus on stigmatized men’s-health problems such as erectile dysfunction and hair loss. A year later， it expanded into more conditions. Hims moved beyond erectile dysfunction and hair loss. Hers added women’s health. Then came dermatology。