Burn Rate

February 28, 2022
Bonobos founder Dunn recounts in this emotional memoir how his entrepreneurial success in making men’s pants exciting covered up for the pain caused by his bipolar diagnosis. Raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Dunn grew up as part of a “solidly-middle class” loving family, did well in school from an early age, and later attended Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he started the men’s clothing company Bonobos during his second year, in 2007. The company’s growth was explosive—but while living a publicly successful life and leading a booming company, Dunn suffered from paranoia, mania, depression, and the occasional belief that he was the Messiah sent to save humankind. After being diagnosed with the illness he came to call “The Ghost,” Dunn went unmedicated and untreated for almost two decades until an arrest for assault brought matters to a head. Instances of bipolar disorder are more common among entrepreneurs than among the general population, he notes, and his frank, pained self-examination shines a light on the upheaval mental illness can bring to even seemingly successful lives. “Let’s not celebrate ‘crazy,’ and let’s not stigmatize it, either,” he writes, “let’s, for everyone’s sake, stop pretending that it’s not here.” The result is as memorable as it is moving.