My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley 1st Edition

When Casnocha, a first-time entrepreneur and author, shares his life story chronicling a jam-packed 19 years, it's clear he listens to Oprah's encomium "live your best life." What's even more jaw opening is the level of wisdom and self-awareness he displays. Each brief chapter features at least one personal, headlined sidebar about, say, customer feedback, advisory boards, or the power of mentors. There are also short "braintrust" synopses from Casnocha's ever-expanding network; venture capitalist Heidi Roizen weighs in on taking responsibility, while writer Chris Yeh muses about the right blend of work and life. In between the snippets lies a compelling narrative, from the author's first meander into customer focus groups to hard-earned lessons about technology and bootstrapping. A simply written yet remarkably direct, honest, and, yes, a bit heart-wrenching account about a lost teenagerhood. Barbara Jacobs
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LORD, I loved being 19. If I had the chance to do it all again,I’d start up my life at that age. For most relatively“normal” guys like me, life at 19 is a joyouslyephemeral state of being in between. Your adolescence is not quitebehind you; your adulthood is not quite at hand. You canappropriate the privileges of a grownup without facing theresponsibilities. And if you’re lucky, you can still put itall on your parents’ tab.
Or you can be Ben Casnocha, the 19-year-old author of “MyStart-Up Life: What a (Very) Young C.E.O. Learned on His JourneyThrough Silicon Valley.” Publishing a book in his teensactually ranks as one of his more modest accomplishments. At 12, hestarted his first company. At 14, he founded a software companycalled Comcate Inc. At 17, Inc. magazine named him“entrepreneur of the year.”
Along the way, Ben (I refuse to address him as Mr. Casnocha untilhe turns 21) was also captain of his high school basketball teamand edited the school newspaper. He will be enrolling in ClaremontMcKenna College this fall.
In the meantime, he’s been taking what he describes as a“year off” to travel the world and to lecture atuniversities while continuing to serve as chairman of Comcate. Somuch for being a normal, carefree 19-year-old.
“I don’t want to be normal,” Ben declares in“My Start-Up Life.” “I want to be somethingelse.”
Ben’s book proves that he is indeed something else, and thensome. Like its author, “My Start-Up Life” isprecocious, informative and entertaining, if not quite fullyrealized as a grown-up work. But it’s still very much worthreading to gain insight into the mind, manners and ambitions of anAmerican entrepreneur from whom we will almost undoubtedly behearing again throughout the first half of this century.
Ben organizes his story in chronological order. He recounts theotherwise “routine day” in 2000 when the teachers ofhis sixth-grade technology class in a San Francisco-area middleschool proposed the idea of creating a Web site dedicated toresolving citizen complaints about local government. Unlike hisclassmates, who abandoned the project as soon as school let out, hespent the summer learning how to write the HTML code necessary tomake ComplainandResolve.com a short-lived but functioningentity.
In 2002, Ben transformed that not-for-profit classroom venture intoComcate, a classic Silicon Valley start-up that provides softwareto enable city managers to track and resolve citizen complaints. Hedescribes days when playing hooky from school started with catchinga flight to Los Angeles and ended with basketball practice back inSan Francisco. In between, there were sales calls to potentialclients, lunches with venture capitalists, and scores of e-mailmessages to and from a software programmer in India.
But “My Start-Up Life” is more of an entrepreneurialhow-to manual than the autobiography of a whiz kid. The narrativechapters are interspersed with sidebars headlined “BrainTrust” and “Brainstorm” that provide insightsfrom adult business people and share the author’s epiphanieson everything from “redefining the entrepreneuriallifestyle” with proper sleep, nutrition and exercise, to waysto “maximize luck.”
“Expose yourself to as much randomness as possible,”Ben advises. “Attend conferences no one else is attending.Read books no one else is reading. Talk to people no one else istalking to. Who would have thought that giving a speech at afuneral at age 12 would introduce me to a man who would introduceme to my first business contact who would introduce me to severalother important people in my life. That’s luck. That’srandomness.”
An appendix offers a “One-a-Day, One-Month Plan to Becoming aBetter Entrepreneur.” If some of the daily agenda items aremundane (“Stop watching TV,” “Form an advisoryboard”), others are both insightful and inspirational.
“Act on incomplete information,” he urges in thecontext of entrepreneurial risk-taking. He says Gen. Colin Powell“expected his commanders in the field to make decisions whenthey had 40 percent of the potentially available information. Inlife-or-death situations. And you think you need moreinformation?”
Unfortunately, “My Start-Up Life” fails to give acoherent account of Comcate’s financing and the currentstatus of the company, which is privately held. In a recenttelephone interview, Ben said he withheld those kinds of detailsfor proprietary reasons because his company is a developingenterprise.
With a little prodding, he told me that he raised “about$250,000” to start Comcate, and that the company is now“self-sustaining” with 6 employees, 75 local governmentclients and anticipated 2007 revenue of $1 million. I just wishhe’d put some of this general information in the book.
Apart from its repeated references to the dot-com mania of SiliconValley, the book lacks political and socioeconomic context. Indescribing the early days of Comcate, for example, Ben notes thatthe fall of 2001 was a “busy few months,” without anymention of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. When I asked himabout that, he said that “it didn’t really impact thebusiness.”
I also would have liked to read more about Ben’s parents. Heduly expresses his gratitude, especially to his father who lentspace in his law office for Comcate. But we never get a clearpicture of what life was like in the Casnocha household. Talk aboutrisk-taking — nothing takes more wisdom and courage thantheir kind of entrepreneurial parenting.
In any event, Ben seems to be gaining an ever more acute sense ofhistory and his own mortality as “My Start-Up Life”hits the stores. He told me that he’s already working on asecond book, about “America as the world’s greateststart-up.”
He added that he intends to make the most of the time left untilhis next birthday, in March 2008. “I’ve got anothereight months until I’m just another boring20-year-old,” he said. (New York Times, June 17, 2007)