The first time I saw the website for Hims, a new men's wellness startup, I thought it was elaborate satire.

The page had all the telltale signs of a millennial-focused women's beauty brand: a gauzy-peach color palette, contemporary type, a clever name, copy about looking your best instead of masking your flaws. There were also a few unexpected winks. A GIF of a bonsai tree sheds its leaves next to a link to its anti-baldness products. Attractive men receive scalp massages with foamy hair regrowth shampoo. An eggplant emoji runs alongside erectile dysfunction medicine. I forwarded the link to a few friends, and they agreed: Hims, a company selling gummy vitamins for hair health, couldn't possibly be an actual brand.

So I called the customer service line. "Are you a real company?," I asked. Yes, the person on the other end of the line answered, Hims is a real brand, selling real products.

[Photo: Hims]

Hims is the brainchild of Andrew Dudum, a partner at Atomic, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm backed by PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel. The company launched November 1 with its first fleet of products: affordable, direct-to-consumer hair-loss prevention shampoos, serums, vitamins, and pills. It bills itself as "the one-stop shop for trusted self-care solutions." Today it debuted its next offering: treatments for erectile dysfunction. Eventually the lifestyle brand will expand into skincare, oral hygiene, and dietary supplements.