Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind

NATIONAL BESTSELLER In this gripping (TechCrunch), eye-opening (Gayle King, Oprah Daily) memoir of mental illness and entrepreneurship, the co-founder of the menswear startup Bonobos opens up about the struggle with bipolar disorder that nearly cost him everything. Arrestingly candid . . . the most powerful book Ive read on manic depression since An Unquiet Mind.Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife At twenty-eight, fresh from Stanfords MBA program and steeped in the move-fast-and-break-things ethos of Silicon Valley, Andy Dunn was on top of the world. He was building a new kind of startupa digitally native, direct-to-consumer brandout of his Manhattan apartment. Bonobos was a new-school approach to selling an old-school product: mens pants. Against all odds, business was booming. Hustling to scale the fledgling venture, Dunn raised tens of millions of dollars while boundaries between work and life evaporated. As he struggled to keep the startup afloat, Dunn was haunted by a ghost: a diagnosis of bipolar disorder he received after a frightening manic episode in college, one that had punctured the idyllic veneer of his midwestern upbringing. He had understood his diagnosis as an unspeakable shame thataccording to the taciturn codes of his fraternity, the business world, and even his familyshould be locked away. As Dunns business began to take off, however, some of the very traits that powered his success as a founderrelentless drive, confidence bordering on hubris, and ambition verging on delusionwere now threatening to undo him. A collision course was set in motion, and it would culminate in a night of mayhemone poised to unravel 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. With intimate prose, Andy Dunn fearlessly shines a light on the dark side of success and challenges us all to take part in the deepening conversation around creativity, performance, and disorder.