The Product Podcast

Hims & Hers CPO on Building Delightful Products in Regulated Markets | Dheerja Kaur | E278

• Product School • Episode 278

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In this episode, Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia interviews Dheerja Kaur, Chief Product Officer at Hims & Hers, the publicly traded health and wellness platform with a market cap of over $10 billion and more than 3 million active users across its Hims and Hers consumer brands.
At Hims & Hers, Dheerja is building the future of preventative care by combining diagnostics, clinical guidance, and personalized treatments—all delivered through a consumer-grade digital experience. From healthcare to fintech, Dheerja breaks down how PMs can master regulatory nuance without sacrificing speed or UX, why pairing product with clinical and compliance experts is a superpower, and how to turn constraints into differentiation through org design, platform thinking, and data. 


What you’ll learn:
 – Why product leadership in regulated industries requires a different kind of PM muscle.
 – How Hims & Hers is expanding from transactional treatments to full-stack preventative care.
 – The rationale behind maintaining two separate apps—and how that unlocks personalization at scale.
 – How AI is powering internal tools, treatment plans, and personalized health journeys.
Key Takeaways :point_down:
 – Building for Impact, Not Just Efficiency: Why Dheerja prefers mission-driven industries that improve lives over “fun” products.
 – Product Meets Clinical: How Hims & Hers pairs PMs with in-house physicians to co-create treatment and diagnostic experiences.
 – From Health Stack to Health Loop: Why continuous testing, personalized treatments, and AI-powered insights are the future of digital health.

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Credits:
Host: Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia
Guest: Dheerja Kaur

Carlos González | Product School 00:00:00

How do you build a delightful, engaging product in categories people don’t naturally love? In finance and healthcare, fear and discomfort often shape the experience. When someone is navigating something deeply personal, a brand that feels empathetic and supportive matters. You get to take a space that feels intimidating and break down those barriers through thoughtful product design. At Hims & Hers, you’ve built an impressive business around individualized treatments for specific conditions, and you’re continuing to expand that offering.


Introduction

Carlos González | Product School 00:00:48

Hey everyone, it’s Carlos, CEO at Product School and your host on The Product Podcast. Today’s guest is Dheerja Kaur, Chief Product Officer at Hims & Hers—one of the most innovative consumer health companies of the past decade. Since 2017, Hims & Hers has grown from startup to public company valued at over $10 billion, generating more than $1.5B in annual revenue and serving 2.4 million active subscribers across the U.S. and Europe.

Carlos González | Product School 00:01:20

Under Dheerja’s leadership, the company has built one of the fastest-growing consumer healthcare platforms across telehealth, sexual wellness, mental health, dermatology, and weight management. Before joining Hims & Hers, she served as VP of Product at Robinhood, helping scale one of the most influential fintech platforms and leading its premium membership to more than 3 million subscribers.

Carlos González | Product School 00:01:46

In this episode, we explore how to build delightful products in highly regulated industries, how AI and automation can transform vertical treatment categories into a horizontal, end-to-end health platform, and how to navigate explosive GLP-1 growth while reinforcing the core business.

Main Conversation

Carlos González | Product School 00:02:10

I’m so excited you’re here—and full disclosure, I still have my hair thanks to being a longtime Hims user. You can’t take all the credit since you joined recently, but I’ll gladly say thank you. You’re now the CPO at Hims & Hers, and before that you were VP of Product at Robinhood. What has it been like building products in industries that are not inherently “sexy”?



Building Delight in Unloved Categories

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:02:41

I like to joke that I’ve spent my career working on “the vegetables”—news, finance, and now healthcare. These are categories people don’t naturally gravitate toward. But the reason I stay in them is because the mission is unparalleled. You’re either helping people build generational wealth or supporting their health and quality of life.

As a PM, you can’t just do the classic product work. You need to understand the regulations, compliance, clinical protocols, and the constraints of the industry. The best PMs know the letter of the law and can creatively solve problems within it.

But the reward is huge: you get to transform something intimidating into something simple, accessible, and empowering.



Consumer Expectations Have Changed

Carlos González | Product School 00:04:38

Consumer expectations today are dramatically higher. Years ago, simply digitizing a service was impressive. Now consumers don’t care whether an industry is regulated—they want a great experience. Robinhood made investing feel almost fun. Hims & Hers did something similar in healthcare. The bar keeps rising.

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:05:10

Exactly. Digitization was once the differentiator—now it’s just table stakes. The challenge is making the experience understandable and engaging, not merely available.



Balancing Access With Responsibility

Carlos González | Product School 00:06:19

There’s also a darker side to frictionless experiences. When everything becomes easier—no doctor visits, no fees, instant access—people can overuse or misunderstand the product. We’ve seen this in fintech and even more dramatically in online betting. How do you think about those tradeoffs?

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:06:56

You have to design responsibly. In finance, democratizing access to markets removed barriers, but you have to pair access with education so people truly understand what they’re doing.

Healthcare is similar but adds another dimension: clinical support. At Hims & Hers, thousands of licensed providers help guide patients. A great product experience paired with education and real medical expertise—that’s how you build responsibly.


Brand Architecture: Why “Hims” and “Hers”?

Carlos González | Product School 00:08:45

Your brand architecture is unique. You have two separate brands—and even two apps. Why take on that complexity?

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:09:15

The dual-brand strategy is one of the smartest decisions the company made. Health journeys are deeply personal. A brand that feels like it understands you builds trust.

For example, we recently launched menopause and perimenopause support for women. That requires a vastly different tone, aesthetic, and emotional approach than men seeking testosterone treatment.

We run one codebase with separate component libraries—different palettes, assets, and flows—so the overhead is manageable. The benefit is huge: we can meet each audience where they are emotionally and psychologically.


Product Expansion: Treatments → Diagnostics → Holistic Health

Carlos González | Product School 00:11:58

Let’s talk about expansion. Historically you’ve focused on individual treatment categories. Where are you taking the product next?

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:12:24

There are two major expansion vectors:


1. Expanding Treatment Categories

We’ll continue launching new, best-in-class treatments—recently hormonal treatments for men and women, including testosterone and menopause care.


2. Moving Upstream Into Diagnostics

This is the bigger shift. Instead of only treating people who feel an acute problem, we want to help them understand what’s happening in their bodies overall.

We launched Labs, where users can get blood work, view their biomarkers, understand where they stand, and receive personalized action plans. Over time, diagnostics and treatment will become personalized and dynamic, forming a continuous feedback loop.

This is the future of healthcare: ongoing testing, personalized treatment, and measurable improvements.


International Expansion

Carlos González | Product School 00:14:38

You’re also expanding in Europe. Healthcare varies dramatically across countries. How do you think about scaling internationally?

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:15:08

Every healthcare system has pain points—just different ones. The direct-to-consumer model for diagnostics, preventative care, and personalized treatment is globally relevant, but expansion requires deep local expertise.

We acquired Zava to accelerate our European presence. Our approach combines:

  • PMs with true domain ownership


  • Local clinical + regulatory expertise


  • A scalable, componentized platform


It’s a balance of global infrastructure and local depth.


Org Design: PMs + Clinicians Working Together

Carlos González | Product School 00:16:50

Your org structure is unique: PMs working directly with doctors. How does that look in practice?

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:17:20

In healthcare, PMs must develop deep domain knowledge. They need to understand GLP-1 science, hormones, biomarkers, diagnostics, and clinical guidelines.

We have an incredible clinical team: a Chief Medical Officer, a CMO for Hers, and SVPs for weight loss, men’s health, and sexual health. They’re practicing physicians who work side-by-side with PMs to write requirements, design testing plans, and ensure clinical rigor.

PMs bring the product thinking; clinicians bring scientific depth. It’s essential in regulated spaces.


AI at Hims & Hers

Carlos González | Product School 00:18:55

How does AI factor into your product strategy?

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:19:18

AI is foundational to the next chapter of healthcare. We hired a CTO with deep AI expertise because of how central this will be.

We’re building in two areas:


1. BedMatch (Live Today)

A system that analyzes user data and generates personalized treatment recommendations.


2. Clinician Support Tools

AI-powered tools that surface insights and help providers make informed decisions faster. Doctors are overburdened with administrative tasks. AI can help them focus on care.

We’re in early innings, but this is where the platform scales.


GLP-1 Growth

Carlos González | Product School 00:20:56

GLP-1 medications have exploded. How do you think about growth driven by a single category?

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:21:21

GLP-1s are an incredible medical innovation, and we’re proud to offer them. But they’re just one part of a broader platform.

Our strategy is holistic: understand the full picture of your health, then provide the right personalized treatments—whether that’s GLP-1s, testosterone, dermatology treatments, or something else.

We track each business line independently, but our focus is the end-to-end health journey.


The Amazon Question

Carlos González | Product School 00:22:50

Every DTC company eventually faces the Amazon question. How do you think about Amazon—as partner or competitor?

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:23:12

Amazon is excellent at selection, speed, and efficiency. But our strategy is fundamentally different.

We’re building a personalized, clinically backed, end-to-end health journey—not a logistics marketplace. We operate in the same category but from completely different angles.


Closing

Carlos González | Product School 00:24:28

Dheerja, this has been fantastic. We covered so much—from regulatory complexity to diagnostics, AI, organizational design, and strategy. Thank you for sharing your insights.

Dheerja Kaur | Hims & Hers 00:24:42

Thank you, Carlos. This was a joy.