Publisher's Synopsis
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-now with a new afterword from the author "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. 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. And as Dunn's business began to take off, 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 conversation around creativity, performance, and disorder.
