Vendor
	Ultra Literary Alička Pistek
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

BURN RATE

Andy Dunn

Launching a Start-Up and Losing My Mind

The co-founder of the menswear startup Bonobos opens up about the struggle with bipolar disorder that nearly cost him everything in this gripping, radically honest memoir of mental illness and entrepreneurship.

At twenty-eight, fresh from Stanford's MBA program and steeped in the move-fast-and-break-things ethos of Silicon Valley, Andy Dunn felt like he was on top of the world. He was pursuing an unproven model - a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand called Bonobos--out of his Manhattan apartment. Dunn hustled to scale the business, raising tens of millions of dollars in venture capital, while boundaries between work and life evaporated. As he struggled to keep Bonobos afloat, Dunn was also haunted by a ghost: a bipolar diagnosis. Received after a wild manic episode as a college undergraduate, it was an unspeakable shame and never to be addressed.

With Dunn's secret locked away, Bonobos began to take off, and some of the very traits powering his success as a founder - relentless drive, confidence bordering on hubris, and ambition bordering on delusion - were now threatening to undo him. A collision course was set in motion - one that would culminate in a violent night that nearly unraveled all that he had built.
Burn Rate is an unconventional entrepreneurial memoir, a parable for the twenty-first-century economy, and a revelatory look at the prevalence of mental illness in the startup community. An intimate and insightful prose, Andy Dunn fearlessly shines a light on the dark side of success and how he overcame it.

Andy Dunn co-founded the menswear brand Bonobos in 2007 and served as CEO through its 2017 acquisition by Walmart. As an angel investor and through his venture capital firm Red Swan, Dunn has backed more than eighty startups, including Warby Parker, Oscar, and Coinbase. Named to Fortune's 40 under 40 list in 2018, he is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He lives with his wife and their son in Chicago.

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Book Published 2022-05-10 by Currency

Comments

A beautiful and stigma-shattering account... I finished Burn Rate in a day.

A riveting and soulful expression of the entrepreneur, Burn Rate blows away the haze of American dream myths to reveal that, often, there's a destructive mania that drives success in this country.

...Andy Dunn has written a riveting and soulful expression of the entrepreneur and given voice to the unspoken truth that entrepreneurial success is often rooted in dysfunction. This is a book for anyone interested in business and mental health...

There is nothing typical about this extraordinarily brave memoir. Burn Rate is a story on two parallel but not incongruous tracks: the rise of a wunderkind and his wildly successful e-commerce startup, and the underlying 'ghost story' of Dunn's secret grappling with bipolar disorder. The result is a long-overdue unveiling - a reckoning with rampant mental health stigma that is especially pervasive in the business world.

Many leaders and founders struggle with mental health, but few have the courage to open up about it. Burn Rate is a must-read not only for entrepreneurs but for anyone who has ever hesitated to seek help and support.

Dunn's raw and honest look inside his own head - and heart - will make all of us reassess how we're really doing.

Mental health at work: It's (finally) time to talk about it - Fast Company brought together a roundtable of business leaders and advocates to discuss why the mental well-being of employees should be a top priority. Read more...

Inerview on CBS Mornings Read more...

"In this arrestingly candid memoir, Bonobos founder Andy Dunn pulls back the curtain on his life and smashes the stigma of mental illness at work," says Grant, who calls the frank account of Dunn's life with bipolar disorder "a must-read for entrepreneurs." Medium and Twitter founder Ev Williams agrees, describing the book as "a riveting and soulful expression of the entrepreneur" that reveals "often there's a destructive mania that drives success in this country." Read more...

[Burn Rate] shines a light on the upheaval mental illness can bring to even seemingly successful lives... As memorable as it is moving.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about the important link between mental health and achievement as well as the crucial role a great support system can be to the healing process.

Andy Dunn's journey of highs and lows, self-discovery, leadership, and life is authentic and too rarely showcased amidst the glitz and glamour of entrepreneurship. For anyone coming of age with big ambitions, Burn Rate is a real reminder of the learning curve of self-understanding and care that is critical to success.

One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2022.

A page-turner written by a masterful storyteller, this book serves as inspiration to anyone who wants to live a fulfilling life in the face of anxiety, depression and mood swings.

A brave, powerful, smart, and darkly funny journey into the heart of edgy entrepreneurship and the timeless challenges of mental illness. From the moment Andy Dunn describes looking over a balcony with his sister - she says, 'What if I fall?' and he says, 'What if I jump?' - I knew he was willing to share a kind of truth it's rare to find in books on business or on mental health.