Bonobos Founder Andy Dunn Detailed the 2016 Manic Episode That Injured His Girlfriend, Then Sold His Company to Walmart for $310 Million

Andy Dunn cofounded Bonobos in 2007 with Brian Spaly, starting with $60,000 of their own money and a line of better-fitting men's pants sold through word of mouth. A decade later, Walmart bought the company for $310 million, according to Fortune, when Bonobos was pulling in roughly $120 million a year in sales, per ua.news.

That deal closed in 2017. One year earlier, Dunn's life nearly came apart.

Dunn has lived with a Bipolar I diagnosis since his college years at Northwestern University, according to ua.news, which cites 1999 as the year he learned of the condition. Bipolar I involves extreme swings between manic highs and depressive lows. Fortune reports Dunn spent years in denial about it while running Bonobos, even as his cofounder exited, executives cycled through the company, and he burned through cash on a fast-paced New York lifestyle.

In March 2016, that denial collapsed. Dunn, in his apartment, became convinced he was both the President of the United States and Batman, according to Fortune. He hit his head on a doorway. When his then-girlfriend, Manuela, rushed in to stop the bleeding, Dunn hit her. When her mother came to help, he fought her too. Eight police officers arrived and restrained him. He spent a week in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.

Fortune's account, which was republished nearly word for word by MSNBC and PressBee, does not say whether Dunn was arrested or charged for hitting either woman. ua.news, in its summary of the Fortune piece, states Dunn was 'hospitalized and arrested in New York' during the episode, a detail that does not appear in Fortune's own reporting or in the outlets that carried Fortune's story directly. No source confirms an arrest took place, what charges, if any, were filed, or how the incident was legally resolved. This represents a significant gap in the reporting, particularly given that two people were physically injured.

What is documented is the aftermath. Dunn began medication and therapy, and started closely tracking his sleep and daily routine, according to Fortune. It took six months to find a regimen that worked, per ua.news, and Dunn says he has since seen a doctor weekly for a decade without missing a dose. Manuela stayed with him through the recovery, visited him in the hospital, and the two eventually married. Bonobos kept Dunn on as CEO until the Walmart sale went through the following year.

Dunn, now 47, has spent the years since talking publicly about the diagnosis in TED talks and his 2022 book Burn Rate. He founded a new company in 2020 called Pie, a social app aimed at fighting loneliness by pushing people toward in-person meetups rather than more scrolling. Pie has raised $24 million and operates in all 50 states and roughly 100 cities, with more than 310,000 users, according to ua.news.

Dunn told Fortune the traits that built Bonobos—drive, confidence, energy, risk-taking—were the same traits tied to his manic symptoms. He also drew a distinction between the two companies he built: Bonobos, he said, was tangled up with his ego and identity. Pie, he says, he sees as a business rather than an extension of himself.

The story includes mental illness, treatment, and a man who rebuilt his life and his marriage after a frightening episode. It also involves an injured girlfriend and an injured mother-in-law whose side of events, legal or otherwise, none of these four accounts include. Whether any police report, restraining order, or criminal filing followed the March 2016 incident remains unreported. Fortune built its story around Dunn's redemption arc, but did not report what, if anything, the two women he struck sought or received in the way of accountability.