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Burn Rate

Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind

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Burn Rate

By: Andy Dunn
Narrated by: Andy Dunn
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About this listen

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 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

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.

©2022 Andy Dunn (P)2022 Random House Audio
Business Entrepreneurship Mood Disorders Psychology Mental Health Haunted

Critic Reviews

“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

“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.”—Ev Williams, founder and CEO, Medium; co-founder, Twitter

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