Bonobos founder bets on friendship
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Andy Dunn used to make men's clothing, selling his company Bonobos to Walmart for more than $300 million. Now he wants to help adults make friends.
Why it matters: Social interactions between American adults, including within households, were declining even before the remote work boom.
- "Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling — it harms both individual and societal health," U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote in 2023. "It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety and premature death."
Zoom in: Dunn has created an app called Pie, a kind of LinkedIn for social life — or a newer, more friendship-focused version of apps like Meetup and Eventbrite.
- Pie connects users with local, informal group activities. Everything from live music parties in apartments to pancake breakfasts to volleyball to show-and-tells for adults.
- "The failure of existing products is that they're focused on one-offs," Dunn explains. "What we need is to see people on a recurring basis to form real friendships."
- Right now it's only operating in Chicago, but the company just raised $11 million in order to expand.
Behind the scenes: Dunn has been open about his mental health struggles, including in a bestselling memoir, and tells Finish Line that he faced unexpected challenges when his family moved from New York to his hometown of Chicago during the pandemic.
- "I missed having platonic friends to watch a Bears game with or play tennis with, let alone a tribe of people I was around on a regular basis," he explains. "And I know it's important to take even low-grade depression seriously because I know what catatonic depression is."
- Through Pie, Dunn says he's begun playing pickup basketball for the first time since college and going to happy hours (even though he doesn't drink alcohol).
The bottom line: Technology contributed to America's loneliness epidemic. Now, we're considering whether we can use those same tools to reverse the trend.
