Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind

When we say someone “is bipolar” rather than “has bipolar disorder,” that’s like saying that someone “is cancer” rather than “has cancer.” The hardest part is that that’s what we hear when we are diagnosed. I am bipolar. Or when others whisper: He is bipolar. Which is why it’s easier to not say it at all, and deny the whole thing.

I had much to be grateful for, and yet my entire focus was on what was going wrong. My mood didn’t fully fit the scatterplot of life. But whose mood does? That night, we went to a karaoke beach bar. The guy who ran the place was all smiles: making drinks, playing songs, singing along. I marveled at his positivity. I wondered why I couldn’t be like

intervention for me. They both knew something I didn’t. I needed to create a geographical boundary between

examination: they both delivered better service as apparel

The guideshops, our next-generation retail store concept, were a classic story of innovation: notice something in the corner that’s working and that is antithetical to your worldview, open your mind to it, give it some water and nutrients, and watch it flower into a centerpiece of your strategy.

The flaws of a founder are sewn into the foundation of the firm.

helping me create a culture at our company that insulated us from the ups and downs of my mood cycles and, in so doing, protected me from myself, and perhaps, the team from me.

I’d spent a year in Dodgeville, Wisconsin—working