Ben Casnocha, 20-Year-Old Entrepreneur And Author Of The Best-Selling Business Book, ‘My Start Up LIfe…’

Ben Casnocha, entrepreneur and author of the best-selling business book “My Start Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley,” will speak at the University of Nebraska at Kearney Wednesday, April 9, at 7:30 p.m. in the Nebraskan Student Union Ponderosa Room.
       The presentation, which is free and open to the public, is titled “How to be CEO of Your Own Life: Entrepreneurship as a Life Idea.”  Casnocha, now 20, serves on the board of Comcate, Inc., the San Francisco-based e-government software company he founded at age 14. His presentation is one in a series on entrepreneurship being sponsored by the UNK Center for Rural Research and Development.
       “I will be discussing the process of starting a business,” Casnocha said. “I will share my own experiences starting a company. I will also talk about entrepreneurship as a life philosophy–how anyone can adopt it to improve their life.” There will be a question and answer session after his presentation, followed by a book signing.  
       In 2006, Casnocha was named one of America’s best young entrepreneurs by “BusinessWeek,” and he was ranked one of the “25 most influential people in the world of Internet and politics” by “PoliticsOnline” in 2004. His work has also been covered by national and international media, including CNN, CNBC, ABC’s 20/20 and USA Today. He also contributes regular commentaries for public radio’s “Marketplace.”
       This will not be his first trip to Kearney. He came to Kearney last March to install his customer relationship management (CRM) request tracking software on the City of Kearney Web site. Kearney uses the software to stay in contact with the citizens’ needs. The software allows Kearney citizens to contact the government on a variety of topics such as building code enforcements, animal control, traffic control and more. In all, more than 60 agreements for the Comcate tracking software have been signed by public agencies across the nation, including the California cities of Redondo Beach and Beverly Hills.
       The best-seller is described as being “…full of precise and actionable entrepreneurial advice.” The book covers a range of topics, including: the fuss about “passion” and how to leverage yours, life as a sales call, take mentoring relationships to the next level and how to become a doer, not a talker.
       According to Casnocha, “It is the story of my own entrepreneurship written in a way that can inspire and aid other entrepreneurs to start their own businesses, or simply become CEO of their own lives.”
       While writing his book, he traveled to nearly 20 countries and worked for three months at a venture capital firm in Boulder, Colo. In addition, he has spoken at dozens of American universities such as Duke University, the University of Arizona, Boston University and the Wharton School. Currently, he is a full-time student at Claremont McKenna College.