Before Facebook groups, before Reddit, before anyone had heard the word "influencer," people losing their hair had almost nowhere to talk to each other. They had a doctor's office, if they were lucky, and a drugstore shelf full of promises. Regrowth.com was built to change that. It was one of the first hair-loss networks on the web, and for a long time it was the place where people went to compare notes, ask the questions they were embarrassed to ask in person, and figure out what actually worked.
How it started
I came to hair loss through the early internet, not the other way around. In 1995 I built Media Connection of New York, one of the first internet development firms. One of the people I built a website for was Dr. Adam Lewenberg, a dermatologist who was combining minoxidil with tretinoin to help it absorb, years before that idea was mainstream. I handled his marketing, including write-ups in GQ and Esquire, and he became a mentor and friend.
The more I talked with Dr. Lewenberg's patients, the clearer it became that they had questions no single office visit could answer. How long before I know if this is working? Is the shedding normal? Has anyone else tried this combination? Those patients needed each other as much as they needed a prescription. So I built Regrowth.com.
What 50,000 people taught us
The Regrowth.com newsgroup grew to more than 50,000 subscribers. They weren't only patients. Physicians, dermatologists and trichologists read and posted alongside people who were just starting to notice a thinner crown. That mix mattered. A question about side effects could get a reply from someone living with them and from a clinician who had seen hundreds of cases.
A few lessons from those years still hold:
- The same questions come back every year. Timelines, shedding, side effects and "is this a scam?" never go away, because a new group of people starts losing hair every year.
- People want specific ingredients, not vague promises. Members kept asking for things they couldn't find in a quality form: a gentle shampoo with ketoconazole, a minoxidil you could actually get onto the scalp instead of the hair. Those requests are why Regenepure exists.
- Moderation is not optional. Any place where desperate people gather attracts people trying to sell to them. Our moderators reviewed content and called out product shills. More on that in a separate post, because the problem is bigger now than it was then.
What's changed since
Hair-loss conversation now happens everywhere: Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, telehealth ads in every feed. That's good and bad. Good, because nobody has to suffer in silence anymore. Bad, because the volume of confident, unqualified advice has exploded, and paid promotion is often impossible to tell apart from a genuine experience.
The science has moved too. Low-dose oral minoxidil went from fringe to routine in many dermatology offices. Transplant techniques improved enormously. And for the first time in decades, there are genuinely new drugs in late-stage trials, which I cover in our pipeline update.
What Regrowth.com is for now
Regrowth.com is part of Regrowth Intelligence, the umbrella that also includes Regenepure and Hairloss.org. The goal is the same as it was in the beginning: clear, honest information from people who have spent their careers in this field, with a firm line between what's proven and what's marketing.
If you're new to hair loss, start with the basics: get a proper diagnosis, learn which treatments have real evidence behind them, and be skeptical of anything that promises fast results. If you've been at this for years, you already know how much noise there is. Our job is to help cut through it.
Scott Blaine Hoffman has worked in the hair-loss field for more than 30 years. He founded Regrowth.com and Regenepure and works as a hair transplant referral specialist.