What I Talk About When I Talk About Money

The Pastel Laboratory and the Silver Ladder

Date: Sunday, December 21, 2025

Subject: Hims & Hers Health, Inc. ($HIMS)

Status: $35.55 (Market Close, Dec 19)

I. The Incognito Night

It was a dark and stormy night. Not in the way a Victorian novelist would describe it, with thunder rattling the windowpanes, but in the modern, digital sense. The storm was silent. It raged inside the fiber-optic cables buried beneath the ocean, a tempest of desperate, lonely signals.

Andrew Dudum sat at the center of this silence. He was not a doctor; he was a cellist turned venture capitalist, a builder within the sterile glass walls of Atomic Labs. The idea did not come to him in a boardroom, but at a dinner table. His sister had cornered him, criticizing his “ashy” skin and tired eyes, slamming a $300 bag of women’s skincare products onto the table. “Why,” she demanded, “do men treat their bodies like rental cars?”

He realized then that men were not afraid of death; they were afraid of the mirror. At 2:00 AM, the search queries poured in like rain into a deep well: hair loss, erectile dysfunction, performance anxiety. They were searching in “Incognito Mode,” hiding their vulnerabilities in the grey fog of the internet.

Dudum understood that he shouldn’t sell them medicine. Medicine is cold and clinical. He needed to sell them permission. He took the shame—that heavy, wet stone in the stomach—and wrapped it in beige serif fonts and pastel cardboard until it felt like a lifestyle choice. He called it Hims. And for a long time, the silence was profitable.

II. The Silver Ladder (Gattaca)

There is a film from the late 1990s called Gattaca that explains Hims & Hers better than any financial report.

In the movie, society is divided into the “Valid” (genetically perfect) and the “In-Valid” (those born with flaws, with hair loss, with heart defects). The protagonist, Vincent, is an “In-Valid” who dreams of going to the stars. To do so, he must scrub away every trace of his imperfections—his loose skin, his stray hairs—and assume the identity of a perfect specimen named Jerome.

Hims is the machine that allows Vincent to become Jerome. When Dudum looked at the market, he didn’t just see patients; he saw millions of Vincents trying to “pass” in a world obsessed with optimization. The “Incognito Mode” searchers didn’t just want pills; they wanted the “Silver Ladder”—the DNA sequence of a better self.

By offering hair regrowth, skin correction, and metabolic optimization (weight loss), Hims wasn’t just fixing medical issues; it was selling the “Valid” status. It was selling the ability to walk into a room and feel like you belonged to the genetic elite. The company’s recent pivot to “Hims Labs” and “Longevity” is the final act of this movie: we are no longer just fixing the broken; we are engineering the perfect.

III. The Chorus of the Oracles (The Bull and The Bear)

But a company is not a movie; it is a creature that must be fed. As Hims grew, the high priests of the market began to argue over its soul.

From the high towers, the Bears gathered, their voices heavy with skepticism.

• The Sceptics at Bank of America looked down and saw a fragile thing. They warned that the “compounding loophole” for GLP-1 drugs—the gold dust of 2024—was closing. They pointed to Amazon, the great white shark in the water, launching its own “One Medical” clinics. “There is no moat here,” the Bears chanted. “Only a generic drug store wearing a fake mustache.” They argued that once the FDA declared the drug shortages over, the Hims empire would dissolve like sugar in hot tea.

But from the other side, the Bulls sang a different song.

• The Believers at Piper Sandler and Jefferies looked at the same creature and saw a fortress. “It is not about the drug,” they argued. “It is about the relationship.” They pointed to the retention numbers, the sticky sweetness of the subscription model. They argued that Dudum had successfully pivoted from a middleman to a “Personalized Health Platform.” To them, the ability to mix custom dosages (titration) was a luxury service that Amazon’s cold algorithms could not replicate. They saw a price target of $50, glowing in the distance like the green light at the end of Gatsby’s dock.

IV. The Battle of the Titans (The Failed Treaty)

The year 2025 was not a gentle year. It was the year the Empire struck back.

For months, Hims had been selling the “compounded” version of the magic weight-loss drugs for $199, a price that felt like a rebellion against the $1,000 toll charged by the Pharmaceutical Giants.

In April 2025, Dudum attempted a daring diplomatic maneuver—a Trojan Horse strategy. Hims announced a “partnership” with Novo Nordisk, agreeing to sell the branded Wegovy alongside their compounded generic. It looked like a truce. The market cheered. But the Giants are not interested in truces; they are interested in dominion.

On June 23, 2025, the trap snapped shut. Novo Nordisk abruptly terminated the deal, issuing a statement that read less like a corporate memo and more like an excommunication. They accused Hims of “deceptive promotion” and selling “illegitimate knockoffs.” They slammed the gates of the castle. The stock crashed 34% in a single morning.

Then came the second blow. On September 9, 2025, the FDA—pushed by the relentless lobbying of the Giants—sent a formal Warning Letter to Dudum’s desk. They flagged the marketing. They attacked the use of the phrase “same active ingredient.”

It was a coordinated squeeze. The legal supply was cut (Novo), and the regulatory air was poisoned (FDA). Hims was alone in the ring, bruised and bleeding, with the crowd waiting for the knockout.

V. The Metamorphosis (The Netflix of Blood)

Most companies would have withered here. They would have accepted their fate as a cautionary tale. But Dudum, channeling the spirit of Gattaca, decided that if he couldn’t join the Valid, he would build his own definition of validity.

In the quiet months of late 2025, while the market wrote his obituary, Hims bought the means of production.

• The Factory: They acquired a peptide manufacturing facility in California. If they couldn’t buy the drug, they would brew their own “silver ladder.”
• The Lab: On November 13, 2025, they launched “Hims Labs.” For $199 a year, they analyze your blood.

They stopped trying to just sell the drug; they began to build a “Netflix for the Body.” Just as Netflix uses data to recommend the next show, Hims uses your blood data (cholesterol, testosterone, sugar) to recommend the next subscription. By shifting from “copies” of Wegovy to “Personalized Treatments” (custom titrations based on bloodwork), they moved the battlefield from Patent Law to Medical Necessity.

They are no longer selling weight loss; they are selling the maintenance of the machine.

VI. The Quiet Hum of the Present

Now, it is December 21, 2025. The stock sits at $35.55.

The “mess” of the FDA warning letters is still there, filed away in a cabinet. But the machine is humming. The company claims 2.5 million subscribers, and 64% of them are on “personalized” treatments—cocktails mixed specifically for their own biology.

Andrew Dudum sits in the center of it all, the conductor of a silent orchestra. He has built a world where the doctor, the pharmacist, and the lab technician are all the same app on your phone. It is a complex system striving to survive, turning the darkness of a 2:00 AM search into a recurring monthly revenue stream.

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A Note on the Nature of Reality (Disclaimer): The numbers on the screen are merely shadows cast by a fire we cannot see. The stock market is a collective dream, and your portfolio is a paper boat floating on a deep, unknowable ocean. Do not mistake the map for the territory. Do not mistake the reflection for the moon. Invest only what you are willing to lose to the wind.