Bonobos founder who helped transform Walmart opens up about mental

Andy Dunn’s start-up, Bonobos, was being courted for an acquisition by retail giant Walmart. It was a thrilling process, but the co-founder and former CEO of the online menswear brand knew it was time to disclose his secret: He had bipolar disorder.

In his new book, “Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind,” the 43-year-old entrepreneur opens up about how his personal life fell apart shortly before Walmart’s $310 million acquisition of Bonobos in 2017 came together. He shares some of the lowest points, including his stay in a psychiatric ward in Bellevue Hospital in New York City and assault charges from a severe manic episode when he struck his then girlfriend and her mother. The charges were later dismissed as Dunn sought treatment and repaired the relationship with his girlfriend, Manuela, who he later married.

Dunn joined Walmart after telling the retailer about the episodes and his efforts to get better with therapy and medication. He oversaw Walmart’s growing collection of brands that started online and contributed to the company’s push into the digital world.

Dunn left Walmart in 2020 and has a social media start-up, Pumpkin Pie.

Early this year, Walmart launched a new, lower-priced extension of the Bonobos brand, Bonobos Fielder. It marked the first time that Walmart’s website and some stores sold apparel under the Bonobos name — part of the company’s broader strategy to launch its own fashion-forward apparel lines and sell more general merchandise.

Dunn spoke to CNBC from his home in Chicago. His comments were edited for brevity and clarity.

You could have devoted the book to advice about entrepreneurship, or Bonobos’ acquisition by Walmart. Why did you decide to write a book about your mental health struggles?

It was a great conversation with my editor, before he was officially my editor. He put it in a candid way, which was in a turndown email: “If Andy wants to write a chest thumping, self-congratulatory memoir about entrepreneurial success, I’m not interested. But if he wants to do an unvarnished story about mental illness, told through the lens of an entrepreneur, then that could be a really exciting project.”

And I was like, yes, that’s what I want to do. That’s the person I want to work with.

What made you ready to relive some of the parts of your past?

Four years of therapy, twice a week, and having really done the work to process and metabolize and rebuild myself after this devastating psychotic break in 2016. And all the strength of loved ones around me

It’s never over with this diagnosis, but I thought I had a unique opportunity to share how I got through at least some really challenging days. I didn’t want to waste that.

In the book, you mentioned…