When Carolyn and I first started working on Wildhawk, we knew what I wanted.
I was 47.
I had been dealing with drips for years.
And I was tired of taking 5 minutes to shake it out every time I went to the bathroom.
Only to feel that familiar wet spot a few minutes later.
But we also knew something else:
Building a product around my own weird little bathroom routine would be a colossal waste of time if other guys weren’t dealing with the same thing.
So we hired a fancy marketing agency to survey 2,000 men between 40 and 70 about dribbles, drops, and urine leaks.
A few weeks later, the results were in…
And the first number pretty much knocked us over.
32% of the men surveyed said they experience unwanted urine leaks.
Roughly 1 out of 3.
Carolyn and I had read medical research saying something similar.
But there’s a difference between reading a statistic in some academic paper…
…and seeing 2,000 real guys answer the question directly.
My first reaction: relief.
And not just because it meant we had a big market for our product.
For years, I’d been quietly assuming I was the odd man out.
I was taking forever in the bathroom, avoiding khakis like I owed them money, and wondering why nobody else ever talked about this.
When I saw the 1 in 3 stat, it finally hit me:
This wasn’t just a me problem.
The thing I’d been quietly embarrassed about was happening to millions of other men, too.
But then my brain did what brains do…
It immediately tried to explain the relief away.
“Sure, maybe 1 out of 3 men deal with this,” I thought.
“But it’s gotta be mostly guys much older than me.”
Then I saw the age breakdown.
And honestly, that was the part that surprised me most.
Guys in their 40s reported unwanted urine leaks at 30%.
For guys in their 50s, it was 34%.
And for guys in their 60s, it was 32%.
Pretty similar numbers across all the decades we surveyed.
This wasn’t “an elderly guy problem.” Not even close.
So if roughly 1 out of 3 men over 40 are dealing with this, why do we feel like it’s some private little failure?
I still don’t have an answer for that.
These days, I’m not embarrassed by drops and drips.
It’s hard to be, after spending years building underwear around them.
Carolyn and I talk about leaks, fabrics, absorbency, odor control, bathroom habits, and wet spots more than any two human beings probably should.
But most men are not living inside the Wildhawk founder bubble.
And the next survey number made that painfully clear…
Among men who experience 2+ drops after using the bathroom at least a few times a week, 44% said they felt “extremely” or “very” embarrassed about it.
Add in the guys who felt “moderately” embarrassed, and the number jumps to 63%.
That bothers me.
Because when you step back, the whole thing is kind of ridiculous.
Guys take Minoxidil for hair loss. We wear glasses when our eyes stop cooperating. Plenty of men take Cialis without treating it like a moral crisis.
Normal bodies change.
Normal men use products that help.
But for some reason, a few unwanted drops of urine still make millions of guys feel like they’re the only one on Earth dealing with it.
They’re not.
And neither are you.
So if drops, dribbles, or leaks have been living rent-free in your head, don’t let embarrassment keep you from doing something about it.
Handle it the same way you’d handle anything else that makes daily life more annoying than it needs to be.
Get better underwear.
- Jack
Co-founder & CEO, Wildhawk
