Many young entrepreneurs are affected by burnout when they try to push themselves beyond what they can handle—causing them to miss out on greater opportunities.
Key Details
- Ambition and a drive for success are necessary traits for entrepreneurs, but as Andy Dunn shares in his new book, Burn Rate: Launching a Startup And Losing My Mind, it can be easy to accidentally push too far.
- Dunn’s early career began with success, but as he struggled with growing pressures from his startup and a bipolar diagnosis, the life he built began to fall apart.
- Through his book, Dunn shares with readers the unexpected difficulties he encountered on his journey and how some of his greatest strengths resulted in his weaknesses.
Why it’s important
Dunn’s startup, Bonobos, an upscale, e-commerce-driven apparel company that designs and sells menswear. He began the business right after college and was an early success. His strong ambition and relentless drive gave him advantages, setting him up for a quick-growing business. However, Dunn’s work-life balance disappeared in the race to scale his business. He raised tens of millions of dollars for the new venture, but work was all he had.
Yet, as Dunn charged ahead and struggled to keep his business from failing, he was hiding his bipolar diagnosis from the rest of the world. His traits of overwhelming confidence, ambition nearing the point of delusion, and an unrelenting drive to accomplish his goals had made his company an early success, but now, those same characteristics started to get in the way.
In Dunn’s memoir, readers gain insight into an unconventional entrepreneurial story and glimpse the hidden world of mental illness in the startup community. Through his story, Dunn asks readers to look at the downsides of success and encourages them to look deeper at the mental difficulties facing those in the creative and entrepreneurial worlds.
Dunn successfully founded Bonobos in 2007 and served as CEO until the company was acquired by Walmart in 2017. Since then, he has backed over 80 startups through his venture capital firm Red Swan. He was named to Fortune’s 40 under 40 list in 2018 and graduated from Northwestern University and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Burn Rate was published by Currency on May 9, 2023.
