Finance
![Andy Dunn - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B09D2VXCWV.jpg)
Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind
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 I've read on manic depression since An Unquiet Mind."-Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022-Forbes
At twenty-eight, fresh from Stanford's 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 startup-a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand-out of his Manhattan apartment. Bonobos was a new-school approach to selling an old-school product: men's 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 that-according to the taciturn codes of his fraternity, the business world, and even his family-should be locked away.
As Dunn's business began to take off, however, some of the very traits that powered his success as a founder-relentless drive, confidence bordering on hubris, and ambition verging on delusion-were now threatening to undo him. A collision course was set in motion, and it would culminate in a night of mayhem-one 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.
"Arrestingly candid . . . the most powerful book I've read on manic depression since An Unquiet Mind."-Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022-Forbes
At twenty-eight, fresh from Stanford's 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 startup-a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand-out of his Manhattan apartment. Bonobos was a new-school approach to selling an old-school product: men's 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 that-according to the taciturn codes of his fraternity, the business world, and even his family-should be locked away.
As Dunn's business began to take off, however, some of the very traits that powered his success as a founder-relentless drive, confidence bordering on hubris, and ambition verging on delusion-were now threatening to undo him. A collision course was set in motion, and it would culminate in a night of mayhem-one 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.
Editorial Reviews
"A brave and candid new memoir."-Tony Dokoupil, CBS Mornings
"[Dunn's] story . . . might just save another life. . . . Gripping."-TechCrunch
"A humble, honest and brave look at the author's struggle with bipolar disorder . . . Not only does the book humanize this affliction, which affects more than three percent of the population, but it offers a rare look back at where things went wrong, what could have been done differently and also provides a template for families worried about a loved one. So many things are extraordinary about this story."-Lee Woodruff, Book Marks
"There is nothing typical about this extraordinarily brave memoir. The result is a long-overdue unveiling-a reckoning with rampant mental health stigma that is especially pervasive in the business world."-Susannah Cahalan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire and The Great Pretender
"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."-Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife
"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."-Mardy Fish, former U.S. #1 tennis player and captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team
"A brave, powerful, smart, and darkly funny journey into the heart of edgy entrepreneurship and the timeless challenges of mental illness." -Patrick J. Kennedy, founder of the Kennedy Forum and New York Times bestselling co-author of...
"[Dunn's] story . . . might just save another life. . . . Gripping."-TechCrunch
"A humble, honest and brave look at the author's struggle with bipolar disorder . . . Not only does the book humanize this affliction, which affects more than three percent of the population, but it offers a rare look back at where things went wrong, what could have been done differently and also provides a template for families worried about a loved one. So many things are extraordinary about this story."-Lee Woodruff, Book Marks
"There is nothing typical about this extraordinarily brave memoir. The result is a long-overdue unveiling-a reckoning with rampant mental health stigma that is especially pervasive in the business world."-Susannah Cahalan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire and The Great Pretender
"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."-Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife
"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."-Mardy Fish, former U.S. #1 tennis player and captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team
"A brave, powerful, smart, and darkly funny journey into the heart of edgy entrepreneurship and the timeless challenges of mental illness." -Patrick J. Kennedy, founder of the Kennedy Forum and New York Times bestselling co-author of...
Readers Top Reviews
Alexander_calderS
This book was the most real piece of entrepreneurial storytelling I've ever read. I consider it canon, and it will be one of my top recommendations for founders new and old. Andy digs deep to share his journey, and it is as raw as it gets. It's a sincere, inspiring, and challenging read at the same time. Mental health is rarely discussed in board rooms, entrepreneurial circles - it's taboo to show weakness. Andy turns this around and shows us that in order to be authentic, in order to heal, we must be who we are. I had to put down the book a number of times as I read it to reflect. I have so much gratitude for all of the gems in this book. Congratulations Andy, both to you and your Ghost. We love you both my friend.
David RabieAlexan
I started Andy’s book a week ago and could not put it down. It was riveting, insightful, inspiring, and gut-wrenching all at once. If you are an entrepreneur, read this book. It’s chock full of important lessons and wisdom – and a reminder that anyone that is trying to create something from nothing will face endless amounts of adversity. If you’ve ever wanted to better understand mental illness – and do so in a honest, vulnerable and approachable way – read this book. If you want to read a great story, read this book. One of the best I’ve read in awhile.
EricDavid RabieAl
This could have easily been a simple telling of "how I became a successful entrepreneur, and what I learned along the way" (which, now knowing how well Andy Dunn writes, I would read that too). But instead, Burn Rate reveals itself as so much more -- Bonobos and Andy's success story become side characters in a story that's actually about relationships and friends and family and love and mental health and self-reflection and growth. Andy kindly and humbly brings you along his journey, in such gripping but concise detail, which makes for such a wonderful and engaging memoir. It's written genuinely and honestly, with such revealing and poignant reflection, and by the time you turn the last page, you feel more aware, more connected, and like you've just read something that time will prove to be very important and lasting.
BrettEricDavid Ra
This is a wildly original book about a startup, and I can't think of another book like it. Many founders with a big exit tend to write books that gloss over the lows, and skip over how their business blurred the boundaries of their personal life. This one doesn't and the reader gets far more than they paid for.
chetna tandonBret
The book is interesting and goes through journey of launching startup company and making it successful. It also goes through an illness symptoms for years. Finally Appropriate medicine worked. Doesn’t make you numb.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
Windu
In Hindi, there are at least ten words for "aunt" or "uncle." Your mother's sister, mother's brother, father's sister, father's brother, mother's sister-in-law, mother's brother-in-law, and on and on: they all have different names. The most affectionate term of all is masi, reserved for your mother's sister. For my sister and me, our mom's family was the strongest force in our childhood. Our mom has four sisters, so I have four masis; it was a profoundly and proudly matriarchal upbringing. What I didn't know at the time was that I would one day spend thirteen years building a company named for a species of matriarchal chimpanzee.
Mom's parents, Prakash and Dhian, were born in Rawalpindi, a city in Punjab State. In 1947, the British split Punjab in two, creating a Pakistani side and an Indian side: Muslims over here, Hindus over there. My grandparents, a Hindu and a Sikh, had to leave in the middle of the night with their two daughters. The region was thrown into chaos, with an estimated fifteen million people displaced, and at least one million killed.
Usha Ahuja, my mother, was born in this context, in a refugee town called Kurukshetra, during her family's multiyear journey from Rawalpindi to New Delhi, where they eventually settled. My mom's mom, our Badi Mummy (Prakash), was a child bride, not educated beyond the sixth grade. She lost two children in infancy before she turned eighteen. Then she had seven kids: five girls and two boys.
My mom and her sisters adored their father, and they feared him, too. The level of his expectations for their success was daunting. He was an enterprising building contractor, a chain smoker, and an alcoholic. He instilled in his daughters a progressive message, ahead of its time in 1950s and '60s India: "You don't want to be dependent on a man like me." His vision for his children was for them to get educated and make it to the United States. By the time he fell ill with emphysema, my mom had graduated college and been shipped first to Canada and then to the United States, to live with my Ashi Masi, by then an obstetrician-gynecologist. My aunt would go on to deliver both my sister and me.
My mom's mandate was to get trained as an X-ray tech and send money home, living with her sister so that she could pass on 100 percent of her income. With her father ill, they desperately needed the money, and my mom-a most dutiful human-answered the call to the sublimation of her own possibilities. Any dreams she had of becoming a doctor, like two of her older sisters, were subsumed by that short-term need in the late 1960s. She never complained about it. She never complains. Money was so tight that when my grandfather died, in January 1969, my mom couldn't afford to go home to New Delhi for his cremation. It haunts her still. She has never gotten closure.
Mom's sisters built the clichéd Indian American immigrant family, filled with doctors and married to them, too. Ashi Masi's husband is a radiation oncologist; Shano Masi, an internal medicine physician, married a surgeon; and Dolly Masi, my mom's younger sister, is a physical therapist. My dad's side of the family is smaller, but also filled with medical professionals.
As I was growing up, doctors were everywhere. My older sister, Monica, and I felt invincible-there was always medical help ready for any issue we faced.
Except, of course, for the one that came.
For Monica and me, Mom was a hands-on cultivator of empathy, a self-awareness developer, and, like her own father, a setter of high hopes and expectations. She was a rare mixture of caring-tough, compassionate, and candid. She was the same at work: in her twenty years of leading a team of a dozen women in a hospital ultrasound department, no one ever quit.
"You have to love the person behind the person that works for you," she'd say.
In my childhood home we had paintings from Mackinac Island, in northern Michigan: gulls, pine trees, windy skies, rocks, and bluffs. There is a gray-blue hue where the horizon meets the lake. My dad's eyes are that color. At six feet two inches, Charles Dunn, my father, seemed to me a gentle giant. "I love you" rolled off his tongue easily; unique, perhaps, for midwestern dads of his vintage. As a parent, he was a watchful protector, a role model for how to treat your wife, the answerer of all questions, and an ascetic who abstained from all forms of hedonistic consumption, save for ice cream. He was a walking encyclopedia. On a trip to Madrid, in 2003, I was three years out of college. Dad...
Windu
In Hindi, there are at least ten words for "aunt" or "uncle." Your mother's sister, mother's brother, father's sister, father's brother, mother's sister-in-law, mother's brother-in-law, and on and on: they all have different names. The most affectionate term of all is masi, reserved for your mother's sister. For my sister and me, our mom's family was the strongest force in our childhood. Our mom has four sisters, so I have four masis; it was a profoundly and proudly matriarchal upbringing. What I didn't know at the time was that I would one day spend thirteen years building a company named for a species of matriarchal chimpanzee.
Mom's parents, Prakash and Dhian, were born in Rawalpindi, a city in Punjab State. In 1947, the British split Punjab in two, creating a Pakistani side and an Indian side: Muslims over here, Hindus over there. My grandparents, a Hindu and a Sikh, had to leave in the middle of the night with their two daughters. The region was thrown into chaos, with an estimated fifteen million people displaced, and at least one million killed.
Usha Ahuja, my mother, was born in this context, in a refugee town called Kurukshetra, during her family's multiyear journey from Rawalpindi to New Delhi, where they eventually settled. My mom's mom, our Badi Mummy (Prakash), was a child bride, not educated beyond the sixth grade. She lost two children in infancy before she turned eighteen. Then she had seven kids: five girls and two boys.
My mom and her sisters adored their father, and they feared him, too. The level of his expectations for their success was daunting. He was an enterprising building contractor, a chain smoker, and an alcoholic. He instilled in his daughters a progressive message, ahead of its time in 1950s and '60s India: "You don't want to be dependent on a man like me." His vision for his children was for them to get educated and make it to the United States. By the time he fell ill with emphysema, my mom had graduated college and been shipped first to Canada and then to the United States, to live with my Ashi Masi, by then an obstetrician-gynecologist. My aunt would go on to deliver both my sister and me.
My mom's mandate was to get trained as an X-ray tech and send money home, living with her sister so that she could pass on 100 percent of her income. With her father ill, they desperately needed the money, and my mom-a most dutiful human-answered the call to the sublimation of her own possibilities. Any dreams she had of becoming a doctor, like two of her older sisters, were subsumed by that short-term need in the late 1960s. She never complained about it. She never complains. Money was so tight that when my grandfather died, in January 1969, my mom couldn't afford to go home to New Delhi for his cremation. It haunts her still. She has never gotten closure.
Mom's sisters built the clichéd Indian American immigrant family, filled with doctors and married to them, too. Ashi Masi's husband is a radiation oncologist; Shano Masi, an internal medicine physician, married a surgeon; and Dolly Masi, my mom's younger sister, is a physical therapist. My dad's side of the family is smaller, but also filled with medical professionals.
As I was growing up, doctors were everywhere. My older sister, Monica, and I felt invincible-there was always medical help ready for any issue we faced.
Except, of course, for the one that came.
For Monica and me, Mom was a hands-on cultivator of empathy, a self-awareness developer, and, like her own father, a setter of high hopes and expectations. She was a rare mixture of caring-tough, compassionate, and candid. She was the same at work: in her twenty years of leading a team of a dozen women in a hospital ultrasound department, no one ever quit.
"You have to love the person behind the person that works for you," she'd say.
In my childhood home we had paintings from Mackinac Island, in northern Michigan: gulls, pine trees, windy skies, rocks, and bluffs. There is a gray-blue hue where the horizon meets the lake. My dad's eyes are that color. At six feet two inches, Charles Dunn, my father, seemed to me a gentle giant. "I love you" rolled off his tongue easily; unique, perhaps, for midwestern dads of his vintage. As a parent, he was a watchful protector, a role model for how to treat your wife, the answerer of all questions, and an ascetic who abstained from all forms of hedonistic consumption, save for ice cream. He was a walking encyclopedia. On a trip to Madrid, in 2003, I was three years out of college. Dad...
