Burn Rate: launch a startup and lose your mind
Andy Dunn startup Bonobos was being courted for a takeover by the retail giant. walmart. It was an exciting process, but the co-founder and former CEO of the online menswear brand knew it was time to spill the beans about him: he had bipolar disorder.
In his new book, “Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind,” the 43-year-old entrepreneur talks about how his personal life fell apart shortly before Walmart acquisition for $310 million of Bonobos in 2017 got together. He shares some of the low points, including his stay in a psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and assault charges for a severe manic episode when he beat up his then-girlfriend and his mother. . The charges were later dismissed when Dunn sought treatment and repaired the relationship with his girlfriend, Manuela, whom he later married.
Dunn joined Walmart after telling the retailer about the episodes and his efforts to get better with therapy and medication. She oversaw Walmart’s growing collection of brands that started online and helped push the company into the digital world.
Dunn left Walmart in 2020 and has a new social media company, Pumpkin Pie.
Earlier this year, Walmart launched a new, lower-priced extension to the Bonobos brand, Bonobos Fielder. It was the first time Walmart’s website and some stores sold clothing under the Bonobos name, part of the company’s broader strategy to launch its own lines of trendy clothing and sell more general merchandise.
Dunn spoke to CNBC from his home in Chicago. His comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Andy Dunn, Author
Courtesy of Brian McConkey
You could have devoted the book to advice on entrepreneurship or Walmart’s acquisition of Bonobos. Why did you decide to write a book about your mental health problems?
It was a great conversation with my editor, before he was officially my editor. He put it bluntly, which was in a rejection email: “If Andy wants to write a self-indulgent memoir about business success, I’m not interested. But if he wants to do a no-frills story about mental issues.” illness, told through the lens of an entrepreneur, then that could be a really exciting project.
And I said, yes, that’s what I want to do. That’s the person I want to work with.
What prepared you to relive some of the parts of your past?
Four years of therapy, twice a week, and really doing the work to process, metabolize, and rebuild myself after this devastating psychotic break in 2016. And all the strength of loved ones around me.
It never ends with this diagnosis, but I thought I had a unique opportunity to share how I got through at least a few really tough days. I didn’t want to waste that.
Andy Dunn credits his family, including his wife, Manuela, with helping him stay healthy. He said the birth of his son, Isaiah, has also helped keep him grounded.
Courtesy of Andy Dunn
In the book, you mentioned another accomplished entrepreneur who had a very public battle with mental health, Tony Hsieh of Zappos. Why do you think mental health has been such a taboo subject in the business world and, actually, in the world of entrepreneurship?
tony’s case it’s so sad and tragic in its own right. Here’s a person who wrote a book called “Delivering Happiness,” who built a company rooted in joyful energy. Zappos was long known and studied by the culture of him. He was known to be the life of the party and someone who did a lot for the Las Vegas community.
He was a hero to me. And then, obviously, he had been suffering in private.
I think that’s part of the typical archetype of an entrepreneur, someone who has that: a bright, charismatic spirit. And that’s to be expected, right? You have to show up with that every day, and that’s inhumane to expect from someone.
The pandemic has started a broader conversation about mental health. What role can the business world and employers play in trying to improve access to care and fight stigma?
The first thing is to create a safe environment for disclosure, so that people can share what they are facing. It’s up to leaders to model that behavior to show their teams that it’s safe for them to step up.
The second step is to build a community around you. I had the opportunity to speak with a group of companies in recent weeks. I loved my conversation with [tech company] Letter because they already have a neurodiversity employee resource group.
The third part is really investing in the care that people need. Regular health insurance is not doing the job in terms of the ability to find mental health professionals. Reimbursement rates are often too low.
The only way for that to change is for there to be investment.
The contrasts in the book were really striking. You’re staying in a psych ward and then shortly after, you’re in talks to make a deal with Walmart. What was it like when you heard that Walmart was interested in buying Bonobos?
I went from thinking that we would do a private equity transaction where we would stay on the independent path to the IPO, to spending time with the Walmart team, in particular Marc Lore. [Walmart’s then-e-commerce chief] Y [CEO] Doug McMillon and really in love with the opportunity to be part of the digital transformation of the Fortune One company.
When I went from being like “independent to the moon” to “joining forces with Walmart would be awesome,” we got to a part of the settlement process where background checks were coming up. It was time for me to think about where I had to reveal it [my diagnosis and arrest record]. She didn’t want to try to hide it.
Andy Dunn attends a launch party at a Bonobos store on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue in 2016. After going digital-only, the direct-to-consumer startup opened physical locations called “guide stores,” where customers could try on the clothes. and ask for it directly to their doors.
Daniel Boczarski | fake images
You helped birth the direct-to-consumer movement in many ways. But many of those companies have not become independent and profitable businesses. What do you think is the future of the DTC model?
The Internet model of pure gaming is difficult. Direct-to-consumer founders, and I was one of them, get too enamored with the direct-to-consumer potential of their brands, but ignore the parts of the legacy retail world that are still alive and well.
Pure gaming Internet models are fundamentally challenged with long-term profitability. It’s important to be humble as a direct-to-consumer founder and to be aware that even if the e-commerce side of the house is growing very fast, there is still a lot of revenue coming through brick-and-mortar stores.
How have you finally found a better balance between your drive for success and your desire to stay healthy?
My son, Isaiah, is a big part of it. He is 20 months old and he doesn’t care about my success. He cares about himself and I think he’s a beautiful thing. I felt so selfish for so long. Building a company can be a self-centered endeavor.
The way I would describe it is going from being at the center of the solar system to being a planet orbiting it. It just creates a fundamentally different worldview.
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