Why Marketing Expertise Became Eucalyptus's Billion-Dollar Advantage
Australian telehealth startup Eucalyptus sold to Hims & Hers for $1.15B, proving marketing expertise can drive health tech scale. How advertising backgrounds built a 775K-customer unicorn.
New York-listed health company Hims & Hers Health announced on February 19, 2026, that it will acquire Australian telehealth startup Eucalyptus for up to US$1.15 billion (A$1.6 billion), delivering a major payday to co-founder Charlie Gearside, a former art director at M+C Saatchi and Special Group.
Marketing-Trained Founders Drive One of Australia's Biggest Health Tech Exits
The all-cash deal includes US$240 million payable at closing, with the remaining US$910 million structured as deferred payments and performance-based earnouts through early 2029. The transaction is expected to close mid-2026.
Eucalyptus CEO Tim Doyle, who previously served as marketing head at Australian furniture startup Koala, holds approximately a 10% stake estimated to yield around US$160 million. Doyle will join Hims & Hers as Senior Vice President of International following the close.
Gearside, who co-founded Eucalyptus in 2019 alongside Doyle, Benny Kleist, and Alexey Mitko, originally purchased 10,000 shares for A$300 at A$0.03 each. His current shareholding and exact payout have not been disclosed. Gearside departed Eucalyptus in early 2025, ahead of the acquisition announcement.
"[I'm expressing] pride in the team and excitement for Hims & Hers' global expansion into Australia, Japan, UK, Germany, and Canada," Gearside wrote on LinkedIn following the announcement.
Eucalyptus Built Scale Through Consumer Marketing Expertise
At the time of acquisition, Eucalyptus operated three health brands: Pilot (men's telehealth), Juniper (women's weight-loss platform), and Software Skin (subscription health). The company had reached more than 775,000 customers and approximately US$450 million in annualized recurring revenue.
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Gearside spent four years in advertising before moving client-side as creative director at Koala in 2017. He co-founded Eucalyptus two years later and served as General Manager of Pilot until January 2025.
According to SignalFire research on health and pharma tech unicorn founders, engineering backgrounds dominate founding teams at 33%, while 45.5% of unicorn founders come from outside healthcare entirely. Advertising backgrounds are not cited among common founding archetypes, making Gearside's trajectory statistically uncommon.
Juniper, Eucalyptus's women's weight-loss brand, attracted criticism from eating disorder charities following an aggressive Black Friday promotional campaign promoting GLP-1 treatments including Wegovy and Mounjaro. Hims & Hers also faces FDA warnings regarding misleading advertising of compounded medicines and a lawsuit from Novo Nordisk over compounded GLP-1 therapies in the United States.
Asia-Pacific Expansion Places Advertising Talent at Center of Health Tech Growth
Hims & Hers' acquisition announcement explicitly identifies Japan alongside Australia, UK, Germany, and Canada as target expansion markets, with Eucalyptus serving as the operational platform. Doyle's appointment as SVP International positions a marketing-trained executive to lead entry into those markets.
In 2022, Gearside also helped lead a A$2.4 million seed funding round for marketing measurement startup Mutinex, alongside Eucalyptus co-founder Alexey Mitko and former Starcom chairman John Sintras. Gearside served as a board member.
The Eucalyptus deal is considered one of the most significant health tech exits in Australian startup history. Deal closing remains subject to regulatory approvals, with completion expected in mid-2026.
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