Bonobos Cofounder on the Highs of Success and Lows of Mental Struggle

The Anxious Achiever

Morra Aarons-Mele

Business, Careers, Management, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2022

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Andy Dunn is the cofounder of Bonobos, a innovative retail company he helped start out of business school in 2007. And while the company reached incredible success, eventually being bought by Walmart, Dunn faced intense mental health struggles behind the scenes. Struggles that came to a head when he woke up in a psychiatric emergency room in New York City. He’s the author of a new book, and shares his story with host Morra Aarons-Mele.

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn Presents.
0:04.9	To be holding back something so foundational to my life is to not be fully known.
0:13.8	And worse, to be presenting a photoshopped and airbrushed version of the truth compared to what really was going on,
0:23.9	which is I wasn't just someone selling pants and raising rounds and ultimately this at least
0:30.2	modestly successful exit. I was also wrestling with this ghost. I was also in denial of the diagnosis that I received
0:40.2	when I was a senior in college.
0:45.5	I'm Maura Aronsmeli and this is the Anxious Achiever. We look at stories from business leaders
0:51.9	who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges, how they fell down, how they pick themselves up, and how they hope work will change in the future.
1:15.6	Think differently, we're told in business, especially if we're starting businesses. Break down walls, disrupt, innovate. Today's guest did just that alongside his co-founder
1:22.9	in the men's retail space. They brought together a few innovations in men's pants, one in the way clothes were made, and the other in the men's retail space. They brought together a few innovations in men's pants, one in the
1:29.3	way clothes were made, and the other in the way people shopped. Bonobos really began in earnest
1:35.1	in 2007 and developed a really successful online offline retail model that we see in so many
1:41.9	places today, with brands like Away, Casper, Dollar Shave Club,
1:46.4	Glossier, and more. The founders eventually sold Bonobos to Walmart for a whole lot of money.
1:53.3	Andy Dunn, our guests today, was spotted early on in his life as someone with entrepreneurial instincts,
2:00.2	and Andy enjoyed the privileges of the rock star entrepreneur.
2:04.0	What fewer people understood, including Andy himself, was an underlying mental health issue so severe it came to a head when he woke up in a psychiatric hospital and was charged with two counts of assault.
2:16.4	Here's his story.
2:29.2	It seems like people spotted you pretty early as a potential entrepreneur.
2:32.1	There's a line in your book where I think a professor says,
2:33.3	Andy, you're an entrepreneur.
2:35.3	Why do you think that was?
	...

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