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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Burn Rate summary
Andy Dunn
Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind
4.6 (190 ratings)
30 mins
13 key ideas
Audio & text
What is Burn Rate about?
Burn Rate (2022) is the no-holds-barred story of Andy Dunn, cofounder of menswear startup Bonobos, and his struggles with bipolar disorder. Long in denial about his diagnosis, Dunn eventually faced up to the condition – but not before it had nearly cost him everything.
About the Author
Andy Dunn has an MBA from Stanford, where he cofounded Bonobos, a direct-to-consumer menswear brand, with Brian Spaly in 2007. He served as Bonobos’ CEO before its acquisition in 2017. Now an angel investor who runs the venture capital firm Red Swan, he has backed more than 80 startups in total.
Table of Contents
Burn Rate
summarized in 13 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 13
Invincibility
When Andy Dunn was growing up in the Chicago suburbs, doctors were everywhere around him. Both his mom’s side of the family, originally from India, and his American father’s side were full of oncologists, surgeons, physical therapists, and even two mental health professionals. His sister, Monica, and he went through childhood feeling invincible.
Andy also felt special because he was smart – smart enough to skip third grade.
Being 14 in a class full of 16- and 17-year-olds was tough, especially as a mixed race kid. His classmates called him “windu” – white Hindu. But Andy was a teenager with focus. So he started pretending that the hurt and anger that came with the feeling of “otherness” weren’t there. It would take him years to learn that vulnerability is not the enemy. But we’ll come back to that – for now, we’re still in school.
One day, a classmate came back from a skiing holiday, and his glamorous stories kindled a fire in young Andy. He discovered that there weren’t only doctors out there, like in his family, but also entrepreneurs – along with their jet-setting lifestyle. Young Andy admired and envied them. He knew he was “gifted” and felt he had an entrepreneurial streak too; his psyche would later exploit this sense of self-importance.
Andy went to college at Northwestern, joined a fraternity, and enjoyed all sorts of privileges. He got internships through well-connected friends, he worked hard, and he played hard too. He experimented with psychedelic drugs, and he fell head over heels for a girl called Camila.
Things were good. Really good. He felt . . . great.
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Who should read Burn Rate
- People interested in mental health
- Startup aficionados
- Memoir lovers
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