Bonobos founder Andy Dunn is back in the builder’s seat, working on a personal social media platform called Pie. But the biggest lesson he learned from his $310 million Bonobos exit has less to do with entrepreneurship than it does with staying sane.
While Dunn was in college, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but didn’t get proper treatment until 2016, when he was hospitalized for a second manic episode.
“The insane state is just a disaster — it’s like being in psychosis, you know, Christian hallucinations. … You can’t do anything in that state,” Dunn said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. The event is a wake-up call. It was enough for Upcall that 16 years after her initial diagnosis, she finally took her condition seriously and started going to therapy, taking medication, and monitoring her sleep.
Dunn wrote a book called “Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind,” documenting the parallel process of building a bonobo and figuring out how to accept his bipolar disorder and Then it should be managed. But the book’s lessons apply to entrepreneurs beyond Dunn’s assessment.
“We all have mental health, right? Suffering or struggling doesn’t require a diagnosis,” she said.
Still, entrepreneurs make a report. More events mental health problems over their lifetime than the average person.
“There is definitely a connection between neurodivergence and creativity,” he said. “I don’t know if entrepreneurship attracts people who are neurodivergent, or if it makes them more neurodivergent, but there’s definitely a kind of virtuous and sometimes vicious cycle.”
The interplay between mental illness and entrepreneurship is even clearer for Dunn, who says that a state of hypomania — the high of bipolar disorder, as opposed to crushing depressive episodes — can be conducive to running a startup.
“There are DSM criteria for this. [hypomania]: Faster speech, increased vision, bigotry, reduced need for sleep, ability to be more creative… more or less the central casting characteristics of a good day for an entrepreneur,” he said. “I can take advantage of this. Worth it, but the price I paid was ultimately too high. I was depressed with suicidal ideation for two to three months a year, and then eventually, complete mania and psychosis came back, which was devastating.”
But even in a surprisingly productive hypomanic state, Dunn doesn’t think he was the greatest boss or colleague. One of the side effects of hypomania is getting irritated when people disagree with you, which is essential to running a collaborative company, he said. Now, driving the pie, Dunn welcomes the debate.
“When we disagree, let’s disagree, disagree more, because we will be able to make better decisions out of it,” he said.
Although the conversation about mental health has become more mainstream, founders still worry about the stigma of disclosing a diagnosis to colleagues and investors. Dunn is a consultant. Founding Mental Health Alliancewhich asks investors to advocate for the mental health of founders in which they invest. But he’s not naïve that the stigma still exists — when founders ask him for advice on when to disclose mental health concerns to investors, he says to wait six. For weeks after the deal closes.
“We raised $125 million in bonobos – would you give $125 million to someone who might be either psychotic or apathetic?” Dunn said. “But also, you shouldn’t do what I did and hide it, because then, you know, when there’s a crisis, it’s a surprise.”
Dunn’s discussion of his experience with bipolar disorder doesn’t seem to have hurt his fundraising prowess, though — Pai just had a $11.5 million Series A. As public as he is about the severity of his bipolar disorder, he’s also open about how his treatment and medication regimen has helped him lead a stable life.
“I consider bipolar my Olympic behavior. For Simone Biles, it’s a way to navigate and win gold,” she said. “For me, a gold medal is to die of something else, right? Because the scary thing about bipolar is the suicide rate.
Now, the next test for Dunn is to do what he needs to do to make Pi successful without sacrificing his stability.
“Here’s the challenge,” Dunn said. “We want good mental health, and we want our teams to have a balance of mental health, and yet a 40-hour work week doesn’t cut it. You change the world from a bunch of people working 40 hours a week. can’t
One way Dunn navigates that fine line is to be open with job candidates about what the job will entail, as well as how it will contribute to the company’s benefits.
“I have a new spell that I give when I recruit, which is that it’s 50 to 60 hours of work per week, and in return, you’re going to get two great things. One, you get to learn more and grow more. Two, you’ve got equity,” he said.
Like any startup leader, Dunn wants his team to work hard, but he believes there’s a way to do that without holding back. Describing his time at Bonobos in “Burn Rate,” Dunn writes, “I came to the wrong conclusion of an immature startup founder: If the business isn’t working, we shouldn’t be working hard enough.”
There’s no denying that founders need to work hard—but taking care of yourself is part of that hard work.
Credit : techcrunch.com
