Andy Dunn’s Secrets to Leading a Company and Taking Care of Yourself

Summary

Your Next Move: Andy Dunn’s Secrets to Leading a Company and Taking Care of Yourself

Episode Release Date: December 3, 2024
Produced by Inc. Magazine and Capital One Business

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Your Next Move, Inc. Magazine and Capital One Business delve into the intricate balance between leading a successful company and maintaining personal well-being. The episode features insightful conversations with Karen Bonner, VP of Brand and Acquisitions Marketing at Capital One Business, and Andy Dunn, co-founder of Bonobos and founder of the social connectivity app Pie. Hosted by Mike Hoffman, Editor in Chief at Inc., the episode explores themes of employee well-being, mental health, startup culture, and the importance of fostering genuine human connections in the digital age.

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Supporting Team Health and Well-being: Insights from Karen Bonner

Founders' Role in Employee Well-being
Sara Lynch opens the episode by highlighting the critical role founders play in nurturing their teams. [01:08] Karen Bonner emphasizes, “Investing in happy, healthy, engaged employees is really vital to their company.” She underscores that the effort in building a team is futile if it leads to burnout and turnover.

Beyond Benefits: Creating Supportive Work Environments
Karen elaborates on practical steps founders can take beyond standard benefits to support their teams. [02:20] “Creating inviting office spaces… can make a big difference in your employees' daily work and office experience,” she states. This includes investing in proper lighting, comfortable furniture, and fostering human connections through genuine interest and regular check-ins.

Resources for Enhancing Employee Well-being
For founders seeking to stay updated on employee well-being trends, Karen recommends organizations like the Healthy Work Campaign and Great Place to Work. [03:08] “By implementing some of the best practices from research-backed organizations like these, companies and their employees can reap the rewards of a healthy workplace,” she advises.

Importance of Investing in Employee Well-being
Karen highlights the tangible benefits of prioritizing employee well-being. [03:37] She cites Gallup research indicating that employees who feel their employer cares about their well-being are “69% less likely to look for a new job,” demonstrating a direct correlation between employee support and company performance.

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In-depth Conversation with Andy Dunn: Building PIE and Leading with Empathy

The Genesis of PIE and Addressing Social Isolation
Mike Hoffman transitions to a conversation with Andy Dunn, who introduces his latest venture, Pie—an app designed to combat social isolation. [04:46] Andy shares alarming statistics, noting that since 2020, individuals have collectively lost “24 hours a month in in-person time… talking to other people.” He connects this decline to broader societal changes over the past two decades, including increased screen time and the erosion of traditional social structures.

Overcoming Challenges in Startup Culture and Remote Work
Andy discusses the initial struggles Pie faced with a one-to-one matching algorithm that failed to foster meaningful connections. [06:24] Inspired by Dr. Marisa Franco’s insights from her book Platonic, Andy pivoted to facilitating unplanned group interactions, essential for building genuine friendships. This shift underscores Pie’s mission to replace digital addictions with real-world connections.

Fundraising and Collaboration with Ev Williams
Navigating the venture capital landscape proved challenging for Pie, with Andy pitching to 150-200 investors before securing backing from Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter. [15:04] “Ev’s view was the next battle is for the online winner that is going to capture the offline attention,” Andy explains. This partnership has been instrumental in Pie’s growth, providing not just funding but valuable entrepreneurial wisdom.

Creating Community through Innovative Events
To foster community, Pie hosts a variety of events such as “Dudes Getting Pancakes” and “Silent Book Club,” designed to create safe spaces for platonic friendships. [17:39] These initiatives highlight the importance of creating structured opportunities for people to connect meaningfully, combating the isolation exacerbated by remote work.

Personal Journey with Mental Health
Andy opens up about his personal struggles with bipolar disorder, detailing how untreated mental health issues affected his leadership at Bonobos. [21:06] He recounts a pivotal moment where his mother-in-law’s unwavering support helped him reframe his condition: “You are bipolar, you don’t have it,” she told him, emphasizing that the illness is separate from his identity. This revelation was crucial in his journey towards healing and informed his approach to leading Pie with empathy and resilience.

Shaping Company Culture: Candor and Courage
Reflecting on past conflicts, Andy emphasizes the importance of transparency and honest communication in leadership. [28:46] “Candor and courage” are core values at Pie, fostering an environment where constructive feedback is balanced with positive reinforcement. This cultural shift is aimed at creating a more supportive and effective workplace.

Future Directions for PIE
Looking ahead, Andy envisions leveraging AI to enhance Pie’s ability to facilitate friendships, such as matching users with optimal group sizes for meaningful interactions. [32:59] “Imagine you could show up for a conference like this… you could get a shortcut to who to go connect with,” he muses, highlighting the potential for technology to bridge the gap between digital engagement and real-world connections.

Advice to Founders on Building Meaningful Connections
Andy offers actionable advice for founders striving to create a supportive and connected workplace. [34:25] He emphasizes the significance of having at least one true platonic friend at work, which research shows is the top driver of workplace happiness. Additionally, he advocates for a balanced ratio of positive to constructive feedback, aligning with the John Gottman principle for maintaining healthy relationships.

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Conclusion

This episode of Your Next Move masterfully blends discussions on employee well-being, mental health, and the importance of fostering genuine human connections within the modern work environment. Karen Bonner provides essential strategies for founders to support their teams, while Andy Dunn offers a profound personal and professional narrative on leading with empathy and resilience. Through Pie, Andy exemplifies how addressing social isolation can lead to both personal fulfillment and business growth, offering invaluable insights for entrepreneurs aiming to cultivate meaningful relationships within their organizations.

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Notable Quotes:

• Karen Bonner [01:16]: “Investing in happy, healthy, engaged employees is really vital to their company.”
• Andy Dunn [06:24]: “How do we take those digital addictions and start to compete for offline attention?”
• Andy Dunn [15:04]: “Ev’s view was the next battle is for the online winner that is going to capture the offline attention.”
• Andy Dunn [21:06]: “You are bipolar, you don’t have it.”
• Andy Dunn [28:46]: “Candor and courage are core values at Pie.”
• Andy Dunn [34:25]: “Having one person who you can go vent to… is the most important thing we can do.”

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For more insights and inspiring conversations with leading entrepreneurs and business leaders, subscribe to Your Next Move on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Sara Lynch]

I'm Sara lynch and you are listening to your Next Move Audio Edition Produced by Inc. And Capital One Business, today's episode, recorded live at the Inc. 5000 conference, is a conversation between Mike Hoffman, Editor in Chief at Inc. And Andy Dunn. Andy is the co founder of E commerce menswear brand Bonobos and served as the company's CEO for 10 years. He's backed dozens of highly successful startups and wrote the memoir Burn Rate, Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind, which explored his diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Andy's latest project is the app Pie, which aims to defeat social isolation. But before we get to that interview, I talked with Karen Bonner, VP of Brand and Acquisitions Marketing at Capital One Business, about the role that founders have in supporting the health and well being of their team. Karen, thanks so much for joining us today.

[Karen Bonner]

Thanks Sarah. It's great to be here at the Inc. 5000 conference.

[Sara Lynch]

Founders put so much time and effort into building their teams. What is their role when it comes to supporting team members, health and wellbeing?

[Karen Bonner]

Yes, it's critical for founders to remember that investing in happy, healthy, engaged employees is really vital to their company. The effort you put into building your team is wasted if your team burns out and turns over. So taking steps to ensure that employees are adequately supported makes it easier for them to manage and balance all of their responsibilities, the ones at home and the ones at work. For example, companies should routinely evaluate their culture and benefits to ensure that employees are set up for success to be their most effective and their most productive. It's also wise to make sure your benefits package has clear guidelines in place to support employees in more complex situations, such as when an employee needs to take a leave of absence. Or let's say they need flexibility to handle some caregiving responsibilities. Regular associate surveys are also something to keep in mind. They can be an invaluable source of feedback on how your employees feel about company culture or managing their workload, and just generally how satisfied they are within their overall employee experience.

[Sara Lynch]

Are there other ways that leaders can.

[Karen Bonner]

Support their teams beyond benefits adoption? A simple but effective way to set your employees up for success is by creating inviting office spaces. So think about things like investing in proper lighting, ventilation, comfortable furniture and even office supplies. These can make a big difference in your employees daily work and office experience. But at the most human level, founders can impact the well being of their teams by placing value in human connection. So take the time to demonstrate genuine interest in the lives of your team members. Check in frequently and ensure they feel included and supported.

[Sara Lynch]

Sometimes it could be hard to stay up to date on the latest trends in employee wellbeing or get ideas about exactly what is working in employee support. Are there resources that can help?

[Karen Bonner]

Yes, absolutely. There are nonprofits out there like the Healthy Work Campaign and Great Place to Work and they aim to provide research based recommendations for workplaces to improve employee wellbeing and overall culture. So by implementing some of the best practices from research backed organizations like these, companies and their employees can reap the rewards of a healthy workplace.

[Sara Lynch]

Why is it important for founders to pay attention to and invest in employee wellbeing?

[Karen Bonner]

When your team is well supported, they are typically happier and more engaged and that has bottom line benefits for your business. Gallup research found that employees who strongly agree that their employer cares about their overall well being are 69% less likely to look for a new job. Ensuring that your company is prepared for a range of situations where employees may need support and training leadership teams to effectively communicate to their teams about benefits and wellbeing can strengthen your organization overall and its relationship to its team members.

[Sara Lynch]

Thank you for being with us and sharing these insights about teams health and wellbeing. Karen.

[Karen Bonner]

Thank you, Sarah.

[Sara Lynch]

And now here is Mike's conversation with Andy Dunn. Enjoy.

[Mike Hoffman]

So Andy, you talk about the genesis of pieces coming both from your background as a mental health advocate.

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah.

[Mike Hoffman]

And someone who struggled with that. And from your time during the pandemic and how that changed your life and everyone's life. And you note some truly alarming stats about how, among other things, all of us collectively, and this is a.

[Andy Dunn]

Crazy.

[Mike Hoffman]

Statistic, all of us collectively have lost 24 hours a month in in person time, like talking to other people and being with other people since 2020, how big a problem is it?

[Andy Dunn]

So it's funny, when you're building a startup and the surgeon general drops a report, that validates the idea. So 20 years ago, we were already in a bad place. Degradation of the American social fabric, cars changing the town square, the decline in faith based institutions, things like the pta, you know, going down. And this book, Bowling Alone came out. And I grew up in Westchester, Illinois. My mom's an Indian immigrant, my dad Scandinavian American. And we used to go bowling on Sundays in the bowling league and people were ripping cigarettes and beer. It wasn't the best kind of set of role models for me, but it was a way that people kind of came together and all of that has sort of unraveled over the last 20 years. Plus technology and screen time. I'm glad that we're now paying as much attention to that social isolation being a pandemic, according to Surgeon General, as we paid, you know, our attention to physical health during the pandemic, and you.

[Mike Hoffman]

Were saying, in addition to everybody losing sort of a day of time, a month, even like day to day, people are losing time to, you know, screen time on top of what used to be like watching tv, Right?

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah. If we live at home with a companion, we're spending five hours less time with them. Five hours, kids, seven hours in incremental screen time above the TV era. So if we've got our lives so digitally focused, our question at PIE was, how do we take those digital addictions and start to compete for offline attention? How do we move from being on our phones to in the real world making platonic friendships again? And that's our focus.

[Mike Hoffman]

So how does PIE work?

[Andy Dunn]

So the research on platonic has been amazing. And actually, originally we built a one to one matching algorithm and it didn't work at all. So we spent two years kind of wandering in the desert trying to find product market fit.

[Mike Hoffman]

So people were swiping right or swiping left and couldn't get there.

[Andy Dunn]

We were told that what would happen is you'd have a perception of an adverse selection of desperate people.

[Mike Hoffman]

Okay.

[Andy Dunn]

And you would have.

[Mike Hoffman]

They're so dark. Right.

[Andy Dunn]

It is dark. And then a dynamic where people would match but not chat. And we basically spent two years proving that thesis true. And then Dr. Marisa Franco came out with a book called Platonic and the lessons of Platonic are there's two ingredients in the emergence of a friendship. First, seeing someone again and again five to seven times in a group environment, that is unplanned. Unplanned interactions. And then secondly, mutual disclosure of vulnerable information at some point. So that became the challenge of how do you productize an unplanned interaction in a group setting.

[Mike Hoffman]

That's interesting. I mean, in some ways, this is a digital solution to a digital problem. That's like, sort of paradoxical. How did that shape your thinking?

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah, I was telling you before, it's sort of funny that we now realize we have to be on TikTok and Instagram where Gen Z and Millennials are. And I'm now addicted to TikTok, which is super messed up. So my mental health is going the wrong way. But the idea is, if we're there, influencing how Gen Z and Millennial folks spend their time, let's get them off their phones and into the real world. So, for example, there's something called Sunday Morning Club started by a guy named Kyle. He was an alcoholic for a long time. At 28, he decided, I'm sick of waking up hungover on a Sunday morning. Let me get people together on Sunday mornings on Oak street beach in Chicago, where we're based, we'll have beach volleyball, we'll have cold plunges, we'll have guys doing yoga, which is called Down Dogs. And the first day, when we started pie, the first Sunday, there were six people there. Now there's over 500 people there every Sunday. People driving in from hundreds of miles. And I think it's because we really do crave belonging and connection, even if the narrative is that that's changed.

[Mike Hoffman]

And so in what year do you launch this?

[Andy Dunn]

So launch is a funny word. Of course. We started the company in 2020. We failed up for four years, and then we really started to grow at the beginning of this year. Now we're growing 20% month on month. And I think part of the reason is we started to drink our own Kool Aid. So the team was remote and hybrid for four years, and it just wasn't a good culture. Like, we didn't have social collision. We didn't have serendipity, we didn't have socializing. We didn't have feedback. We didn't have the conversations that happened before and after the meeting. So we decided to go all in, five days a week, in person in river north in Chicago. And I don't think it's a coincidence that that's when the growth started to.

[Mike Hoffman]

Come five days a week. I mean, so everybody knows, right? Remote work and hybrid work and return to office. These are some of the flash points. Some businesses just kind of skip over them and are fully remote forever. But other businesses have real tension with managers and workers and other stakeholders about whether or not they should be in office. You've decided for your company you should go all in, and as a result of that, you've seen growth. Can you talk about that?

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah. So we were remote and hybrid, small team, about 12 people, and realized that we had to change it up. So I said, all right, we're going to be in person. We're going to be where I am, which is Chicago, and offered everyone three months cash bonus. And I said, I'll personally find you an apartment on Zillow. And I thought, you know what? We'll get a couple of people. Three people. No one. Everyone said no.

[Mike Hoffman]

Wow.

[Andy Dunn]

So I was the only employee at the company on January 1, which was a little terrifying. And, you know, people had kind of generous severance, and they went their ways. And then I got to do something cool, which is I got to recruit people who were looking for it. And so I got to say, look, this is five days a week in person. And folks say like, well, Gen Z doesn't want that. And maybe that's true, but we found the people that really do want that. And how are we going to train up and coming generations if we're not together? Many of us here who are in our 30s or our 40s or beyond, that's how we learned. And I feel like at least some companies owe it to the up and coming generations to provide that kind of mentorship and serendipity.

[Mike Hoffman]

I think it's interesting in a startup culture too, right, because you want people to learn the product and develop the product and change it and respond to market forces. And people also learn how to be. Move up the ladder and move into a new role and expand their skills through observation. And that's something that can feel lost in a remote world unless you're really intentional about it.

[Andy Dunn]

Totally. And I think many of you here probably have remote or hybrid companies thinking like, well, this is working really, really well for us. And I think that can definitely be true. I think if you have a culture that was built prior to the pandemic and now your team is distributed, you already have trust, you already have found something that's working and growing. But if you haven't found something that's working and growing, and if no one really has spent that much time together, how do you even earn the right later to have more flexible work policies? And that's where we decided to just go, just pretend like the pandemic never happened. And now I try not to have any zoom meetings all week. Oh, wow.

[Mike Hoffman]

How does that go?

[Andy Dunn]

It's amazing. And I'll tell people even who want to connect externally, I say, let's meet when you're in Chicago, let's get lunch. And they're like, why don't we schedule a zoom? And it's like, no.

[Mike Hoffman]

And what's. And so how is that? I mean, it's good. How has that changed the way you work? Oh, you're getting applause.

[Andy Dunn]

No, you know, I'm like, I don't know, I'm like a three dimensional person. You know, 91% of human communication is through body language.

[Mike Hoffman]

Right.

[Andy Dunn]

Who's actually looking at who in a meeting, who's checked out, who do you call on because they look bored? These things are like, let's go grab lunch. These things I don't know how we're going to do it over time. Like, I'm just, I totally respect it. If it's working for you, I want to cheer that on. Like, that's awesome. But I also want to encourage those of you who are like, can I do this? Just do it. And you'll have some people say like, well, I don't want to do this. And you can just say, great news, you don't have to work here.

[Mike Hoffman]

Right.

[Andy Dunn]

You know what I mean? Like work somewhere else. Like, you don't have to be here. And like, that's okay. You know, we're lucky. We live in a very low unemployment era and if we're doing information work or work people have a lot of options. They'll figure it out.

[Mike Hoffman]

Yeah, I think it's interesting, right? So pie is around platonic friendship. And for many of us, I think a way that you made friends earlier in your careers were the people you worked with. And that's something that I think has been lost in kind of the remote work era. Is that something you think about? And do you see the new in person folks at your company actually developing friendships with their colleagues?

[Andy Dunn]

Well, I lived in New York for 15 years. That's where I built bonobos. That's where I met my wife, had a kid and we moved to Chicago three years ago. My dad's had cancer for 10 years. It was time to kind of come home and focus on that. And then, you know, grandparents and grandkids is a beautiful thing. So I moved to Chicago with my wife, with a one year old. My parents live down the street, my sister lives down the street. And so I had all this love in my life and yet I felt lonely and I realized I don't have any guy friends. Like, I want to hang out with friends, I want to vent, I want to like watch sports, I want to just do stuff. I don't have any of that in my life. And I also didn't belong to a tribe. Like, I love tribes, I love groups, I love building teams. And I didn't have that in my life. And so it's been really nice to have friends again. And like our COO is someone that I've really bonded with and I have a friendship now with someone through work, which is, by the way, like how it used to happen.

[Mike Hoffman]

Right, right. It's interesting. So do you see the startup scene that you're in now in Chicago as being different from the startup scene that you were in in New York when you were building bonobos?

[Andy Dunn]

The startup scene in Chicago needs some help.

[Mike Hoffman]

Oh, interesting.

[Andy Dunn]

It needs some help. We have a lot of venture capitalists who actually do private equity, but they call it venture capital. So they're.

[Mike Hoffman]

So talk about that nuance.

[Andy Dunn]

They're like looking for proof. And startups at the early stage are not about proof, they're about belief. And I think that Chicago doesn't have that growth mindset fully baked into the culture. And so we call it PayPal culture, which is we think Chicago needs a PayPal. We need that picture of the 15 people who went out and changed the world, except we need some women, people of color in it. And I think Chicago's got that potential. But we need a company that throws off a thousand angel investors and another hundred startups and decided, let's try to be that company.

[Mike Hoffman]

Oh, that's interesting. So you've raised money from Forerunner and you've raised money from Ev Williams of Twitter. And I think it's interesting, right, on some level you're trying to Pie is trying to address the problem created perhaps by social media and being funded by one of the most successful entrepreneurs in social media. Great. That's a great tension point when you and he talk about pie and like how it can be both on some level a social media app, but also be different. Tell us about those conversations.

[Andy Dunn]

Well, when Elon bought Twitter, I asked Ev, as one of the founders of Twitter board member, how do you feel about it? And he's like, well, he sent me a funny emoji, I won't say which one. And then he was like getting approached to build a new Twitter. Lots of people, lots of teams. And eventually he just told me, I don't think we can solve this problem with another digital product. There is just a thing about the way that digital town squares behave and some behave better than others, but at the end of the day, they do attract a certain kind of narcissistic person. Right. Everyone who's not narcissistic is observing everyone who is. And I think, I don't totally, I don't totally mean that. And so ev's view was the next battle is for the online winner that is going to capture the offline attention.

[Mike Hoffman]

Right.

[Andy Dunn]

And so that's why I think he, he led our seed round. And I'll tell you, we did a very cool pre seed with Forerunner and Lightspeed and then we had no momentum and I went out to the venture capital markets and everyone said no. I pitched 150 to 200 people for our seed and everyone said no. And so I realized I need to find a high net worth person that believes in this. And EV has been amazing. And it's great to work with someone who's a builder and entrepreneur themselves. And it's been invaluable having someone like him on the cap table.

[Mike Hoffman]

I'm curious, like, how is working with a founder in that capacity different from if you had an institutional investor? Like, what's the nature of the interaction? That's different.

[Andy Dunn]

I think for me, it's like you've done it and I think there are some great investors out there, but often you're getting advice from someone who hasn't done it and you're kind of like, well, how do you know? And then I'm with Ev who invented blogging and co invented tweeting and then long form journalism. He started blogger, then he started Twitter, he started medium. So it's a different level of, I think, wisdom and empathy for the entrepreneurial experience that he has. And it's a different level of admiration and respect for that wisdom and for what he's built. I remember one time talking to him and saying, hey, what kind of growth to get to this round? What are you looking for? And he was like, I don't really care about growth. Let's just build like a product that matters and that can endure. And it just was like an investor that doesn't care about growth, but cares about product and something that can endure. And that was just a really special moment because it was at a time where we weren't growing much.

[Mike Hoffman]

That's fascinating. So you said like sort of a year ago or so. If I'm getting my chronology right, PI started to grow after. After sort of being stalled for a while. What were some of the things that happened that put you on that growth path? Like what? When did it click?

[Andy Dunn]

So first it was hiring people in Chicago who were scrappy, who really wanted to do this in a market where there's not as much competition for talent. And we went out and we built all these recurring ways people can meet with our team. So like men, we're really bad at making friends. So we launched a series called Dudes Getting Pancakes. And Dudes Getting Pancakes became a way for men to feel safe getting together and hanging out. Then we had silent book club. We had snail mail Sundays.

[Mike Hoffman]

Silent book club. What is that?

[Andy Dunn]

Silent book club is actually already a thing. But it's like you get together and read communally, but you don't talk.

[Mike Hoffman]

I love it.

[Andy Dunn]

And then you finish reading.

[Mike Hoffman]

It's the quiet car on the Train.

[Andy Dunn]

It's the quiet car on the train. Because we like being around people. Right. And then we did some more obvious stuff like, you know, basketball and tickle ball. And then we just kept innovating. We had a woman on our team. She's 25. She loves playing pool, but she feels like men are really aggro at bars.

[Mike Hoffman]

Where'd she get that idea?

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah, she launched gals playing pool, and it's just a bunch of women getting together. Then we were talking about, like, well, how do we build a dating experience? And she said, why don't we build a Heartbreak Club? And so now we convene people who just have gone through a breakup. And what's cool about that is, first of all, everyone's single, which is interesting. And everyone's kind of broken and vulnerable and wounded, which is a great time to meet people. Just kidding.

[Mike Hoffman]

And also, transition transitions are good.

[Andy Dunn]

And also, you short circuit that vulnerability that builds relationships. And so that's kind of our goal, is how do we get people to be honest with each other so that we can speed up that platonic friendship formation cycle, but also not have it be too high pressure. Right. Because you don't really know who you're going to connect with. Like, I think there's some good one to one matching products, but that's not exactly how it actually works. If you think about our lives, it's people that we just. You don't realize they're friends until you're in the rearview mirror. You're like, oh, we're friends now because we kept hanging out. Whereas that one person in your life who's like, do you want to be my friend? And you're like, no, I don't. Like, that's stressful.

[Sara Lynch]

We're going to take a quick break and be back with more from Mike and Andy.

[Mike Hoffman]

Do you find it difficult to make friends as a founder?

[Andy Dunn]

I think other founders sometimes make bad friends. It's like herding cats. Like, I don't want to know that many other founders. Like, I want to know some musicians and history teachers and firefighters. Like, one of my son's friend's dad is a plumber. Like, we go to the Blackhawks game, and that's fun. So I like. I mean, I love you, all right. But I think it's important to diversify on so many fronts who we spend social time with.

[Mike Hoffman]

And does that diversifying help you build a better product?

[Andy Dunn]

I mean, certainly, I think we've gotten to this world where, like, the elites run the world or something like that. And lost some sense of empathy for people that are different than us. And what I like about Chicago is a very blue collar city. Like, people just call bullshit on you. I don't know. I lived in San Francisco, in Chicago and New York for 17 years. And there's something refreshing about being in a town where, like, that's just not tolerated to show up that way. And there's also a problem with it, which is that there's also kind of like a tallest poppy syndrome of maybe don't be too ambitious, which I loved about New York. Like New York, there's a worship of chutzpah and ambition. So I'm trying to blend what I learned in the coast, on the coast, with being back home.

[Mike Hoffman]

That's really interesting. So you write in Burn Rate about, you know, challenges and struggles in your life. Right. Like, you're a mental health advocate, and that comes from a place of having mental health struggles. Can you. For folks who haven't read the book book, can you talk a little bit about that and how that shaped your view as you built PI?

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah, yeah. So when I was building bonobos, I was wrestling with the secret, which is I had unmedicated, untreated bipolar type one. And you know, as we all know, building a company is a roller coaster. And so that became an excuse and a cloak for this underlying medical condition that was also probably making those highs higher and those lows lower. And I come from, as mentioned, Indians on my mom's side and Scandinavians on my dad's side. A very divergent set of cultures, but with one thing in common. You don't go to therapy. Have you ever met an Indian in therapy? Sorry, just kidding. There is a sense that I had growing up that you don't do that unless there's something wrong with you. And so when I was diagnosed out of college after I had something called a manic episode, which is basically thinking, you're Jesus for a week, which is like, awesome. Like, being Jesus for a week is so cool.

[Mike Hoffman]

But it's the ultimate founder syndrome, right?

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah, totally. Talk about it. And it's obviously a nightmare for everyone else because you're losing touch with reality. You're psychotic. And so I got to the hospital, my parents got me there. I kind of got Jedi mind tricked to going. And I spent a week there. And as I walked out, they were like, here's your diagnosis. It's bipolar type one. Your mania could return at any point in your life. I went home and looked at it and was like, the suicide attempt rate for bipolar one is 60% and the suicide rate is 20%. And it just was too much to take on as a 20 year old. Like all of a sudden I had this thing and with mental health we even say like, you are bipolar, you don't have it. Like, imagine saying you are cancer. Like, I've got bad news for you, you have cancer. And also you are cancer. And that's basically what we do with people with mental health challenges. We conflate the illness and the identity. And so I did with what a lot of kids do with this diagnosis, which is I just was in denial, stopped taking my meds, said I didn't need treatment, and then had this really wild 16 year run of not dealing with it until there was quite a reckoning.

[Mike Hoffman]

And can you talk about that reckoning?

[Andy Dunn]

The reckoning was bad. One of the pernicious things about mania is it can come from a good mood. It can come from something good that happens in your life. In my case it was I was falling in love with my now wife.

[Mike Hoffman]

And which is like the greatest thing, right?

[Andy Dunn]

It's the best. I mean, it's its own form of, you know, euphoric, euphoric feelings. And I ended up in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital in New York for a week. It was very different. I wasn't 20, I was 36, I wasn't a college kid. I had 600 employees and had raised, you know, a hundred million of venture capital. And so when I came down from the mania, which takes about three or four days, you get a lot of sleep medication, you take a lot of medication, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers. It was very different because I was ready to deal with it. I was glad. I was relieved that I was now acknowledging and everyone around me was acknowledging, Andy has this issue. He isn't the issue, but he has it. And so I walked out. I was discharged after a week and I was ready to like give my family a hug and kind of move, move on with my life. And I walked into four NYPD police officers and I was read my rights. They put handcuffs on me, they put me into a cop car. They had a cop car in front and in back. I was like, what am I, El Chapo? Like, what's going on here? Like, I'm not a threat to society at this point. But obviously it was a very dark day because it turns out that while I had been manic, I had assaulted my now wife and mother in law who were trying to prevent me from running out into the streets of New York. So that became a very difficult year to figure out how to get healthy, to see if Manuela would stay with me, to see if I was going to lose my job or have to step down. Was there going to be press about this? Was I going to have, you know, a long journey through the legal system and my mother in law really helped heal me. We, I went and sat down with her a week after I got discharged and she put her hand on my hand. Try to picture this. The last time you saw this person in their 70s, you literally assaulted them. And now you're showing up for lunch being like, what is this going to be like? And she put her hand on my hand and she said, andy, this is just like any physical illness. All you have to do is take your medication and see your doctor. And if you do, and if Manuela wants to stay with you, then you have my blessing. And then I just cried for 20 minutes straight because your own family kind of has to deal with you. But I'd always thought there was something broken about me partly because of that illness, identity conflation. And so the fact that she was saying, I've just seen you at your worst and I'm like, good with you. That was a really healing moment for me. Wow.

[Mike Hoffman]

Wow.

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah.

[Mike Hoffman]

You write really movingly in Burn Rate about that experience and your relationship with your mother in law and your now wife and your family. You also write, I think, very movingly around your relationship with your business partner, who you had a very fractious relationship with. And many folks here may have business partners and some of them may have former business partners, if you know what I mean. And you had a difficult relationship and you've been able to come to terms of understanding that your behavior was a big part of it. Can you talk about that experience of having a business partner through this really, you know, rollercoaster ride?

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah. So Brian Spae was the kind of the product genius behind Bonobos. He invented a better fitting pair of men's pants. We got in business together and within two years we had a lot of arguing and a falling out. And so over the course of the next year. How do I say it like, I basically staged a coup to get him out and he left. And actually the harder part after all that conflict was the year after he left, when I couldn't blame it on him anymore. It was really nice to blame everything on him while we were together. And I've. I've come to appreciate two kinds of people in life. Blame everyone else and blame yourself. And I Kind of like to blame yourself people, because then there's also the agency of, if it's my fault, I can fix it. I wish I could go back and role model the thing that I feel like he was good at, which is I was very direct. He was very direct, and I wasn't, you know, and my. My dad's culture, Scandinavian culture, you don't talk about conflict, you don't resolve it, and eventually you don't talk at all. Like, my dad doesn't speak to either of his siblings. I just brokered a peace treaty with him and his sister, who hadn't seen each other in 17 years, even though they live 17 miles apart. And we had Lumeli's pizza, and it was great, but, you know, we've lost a lot of time. And then my mom's family, the Punjabi Indian immigrants, where you say exactly what you think in real time to everyone except the person that you thinking about. So it's like a perfect transparent gossip network. And now my wife's family, New York City Jews were like, the first time I had dinner with my now wife and mother in law, my wife was crying because they were in what I then called a fight that I now just call a spirited discussion. And so I didn't have that radical candor in the workplace and Brian did. And I wish we could rerun the play. If I could have met him there. On the same level of transparency and honesty as you think about the folks.

[Mike Hoffman]

At PI, how do you think about how is PI sort of constructed and designed, culturally or otherwise, to be different from Bonobos? Like, is there something that you're retrospectively correcting for?

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah. So candor is one of our core values. Candor and courage. And so I work, and it was almost a reminder to myself that I struggle with negative emotion, communication. I'm good with the positives. I'm good with the, like, you did amazing on that. I'm good with the vulnerable stuff, which is like, hey, here's something about me I'm bad with. I'm angry, I'm disappointed, I'm frustrated, I'm worried. Those I struggle with. And so I've learned that when I feel that on like a 3 out of 10 towards someone, I just, like, let the words fall out and say it like that Sarah Burrell song, like, let the words fall out. So, like, I'm in a meeting with someone, they didn't do a good job, in my opinion, on something. And I just say something like, I feel like you didn't do a good job. On that thing.

[Mike Hoffman]

Sour Bare LS MANAGEMENT guru right. It's just.

[Andy Dunn]

And it's such a relief to say it. And you gotta say it when it's like a little micro feeling. It's just percolating because once it gets here, it's not gonna. It's gonna. Then don't say what you want to say. Right? Like once your emotional intensity is high, then you have high velocity words like, I don't think you're good at this, which is very different than you didn't do a good job. Gets back to identity and issues. So I try to role model that now. And by the way, I'm just much happier with my job because I'm not holding on to stuff for so long.

[Mike Hoffman]

It strikes me that like one superpower of entrepreneurs, if you can get there right, is the notion of knowing how to manage yourself. Is that something that you feel like you've gotten better at over the past couple of years?

[Andy Dunn]

One of the blessings of the journey with bipolar is I now do therapy twice a week. I don't think everyone needs to do that, but I think even if you feel like you're eminently sane, which you're not, but you feel like it, congrats. I think at six months of out of every three years, you should do therapy once a week for six months just to kind of take care of your mind the way that you would take care of your body. So if you care about your body, we should care about maybe the one of the top couple of organs that you need to live, which is your mind. And so, yeah, meditation and all these things. But therapy is helpful because you kind of get to get in there on your blind spots and particularly having a therapist who doesn't agree with you all the time. And it takes some therapist dating to get there. Right. Like if you don't like your therapist, just stop and go to another one. And it might take three or four and then you have like your best friend in building a business, it's not an executive coach, it's a mental health professional. And it can help a lot because there are a lot of highs and lows and there is a lot of interpersonal conflict and there are stresses that occur with your families and friends. And having someone who you can objectively talk to about that and get those emotions out of your body so that you can show up better and more communicative in those relationships, I think is the most valuable investment you can make as an entrepreneur.

[Mike Hoffman]

It's interesting hearing you talk about it. There's like Sort of this network or ecosystem around you of people that you turn to for different things, but all in the spirit of building resilience for you personally, and then hopefully that's something you can build resilience for your company as well. How do you think about maintaining those relationships and building those relationships?

[Andy Dunn]

I have an outside counsel, lawyer one day who was like, you're kind of like a hot house flower. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, you got to spray. You got to make the temperatures in the room, right? And I was like, what the heck? And I came home and told my wife, and she just started dying laughing. So, no, it's a joke. I mean, I think on the one level, I feel that that's true about myself. And also I feel proud that I'm, like, dealing with all this shit. And it does take. It takes a village around all of us, right? Certainly in these roles, but around everyone in our lives. You know, they say that suicide is a thought that comes across the brain of 90% of people in their lives. The hardest part is to tell someone you don't want to live anymore, but it's not that big of a deal because it's normal. So how do we cultivate the conditions where you can say to a friend or a loved one, like, I just don't want to do this anymore. Wait, do what? You know, this life thing. And so I celebrate a culture that's moving towards that kind of transparency because we need to take care of each other.

[Mike Hoffman]

That's great. We've just a couple minutes left. But as you think about PI now, suddenly you're on a growth path, which is great and exciting. Like, what's sort of the next move for PI? What's your next move as a company?

[Andy Dunn]

So there is some research around how many people is the optimal size of a group to make a friend. And the headline of what we're learning is six people. Six is the magic number around a dinner table. And at some of our larger events now, what we hear is, I went and I didn't know who to talk to. And that's its own form of social stress. So what we're working on is using AI to be able to tell you, here are the five or six people that you should meet. Like, so imagine you could show up for a conference like this where you're meeting a lot of people, and in a future state where many of you are on pie, you could get a shortcut to who to go connect with. And so that's kind of the Next frontier is how do we take this inflection point in artificial intelligence and LLMs and multiply that by the inflection point of people acknowledging loneliness and social isolation and build a new kind of world.

[Mike Hoffman]

My last question is founders play such an important kind of civic role that's sometimes, I think, not fully understood, where everyone is sort of the mayor of their own company in a way, right? There's this group around them, and founders can have a real impact on the lives of the people who work with them and alongside them. For everyone out in the audience who has employees, who is a founder who can impact the lives of their employees. Would you say building more friendships is a key part of that, not just for ourselves and the health of our businesses, but for society? And if the answer is yes, which I think it is, then what steps can each person here take to create more meaningful connections and bonds within their companies?

[Andy Dunn]

Yeah, I think there's two things. One is the research on happiness at work shows that the number one driver of work happiness is having one true platonic friend at work. It's not growth, it's not compensation. Those things all matter. But it's having one person who you can go vent to, right? About your boss, who you can talk to about things. And so how do we create the conditions where our team members can form friendships? As a leader, CEO, founder, it might be hard to find a friend to work with. Had a professor at Stanford that said, if you're a CEO and you want a friend, get a dog. But I think even, even all of you need to have a one friend at work, right? There's maybe one person on your executive team or even more junior in the org or a partner where you have that. And I think that's the most important thing we can do, is create those conditions. And then in terms of our leadership of teams, yes, candor in terms of things that aren't going well. But having that in a 3 to 5 to 1 ratio of positive to construction, positive to constructive. And that's the John Gottman principle, which is it's easier to give feedback if you've poured in a lot of positive. And so I had a mentor who says there are no diminishing returns to specific positive feedback. And so if you see something that you like, don't just say good job, but say good job with that thing. And those have to sit side by side, the positive and the constructive.

[Mike Hoffman]

That's great advice. Hard advice sometimes to take, but great advice. Andy Dunn, founder of PIE and author of Burn Rate thank you so much for being here today.

[Andy Dunn]

Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

[Sara Lynch]

That's all for this episode of youf Next Move. Our producer is Matt Toder. Editing and sound design by Nick Torres. Executive producer is Josh Christensen. If you haven't already, subscribe to your Next Move on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, your Next Move is a production of Inc. And Capital One Business.