My Start Up Life by Ben Casnocha
I just finished reading Ben Casnocha's book, My Start Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley, and it was definitely a page-turner that I would recommend reading for enjoyment and for learning.
Now, I know what people mean when they tell me that I make them feel like an under-achiever. What takes many entrepreneurs decades to learn, Ben learned extremely quickly and at a young age:
- The power of sales
- The importance of networking
- How to build an active advisory board
- How to outsourcing to India
- The importance of bootstrapping and frugality
- etc.
These are all lessons Ben learned by the age of 16, an age where the farthest most students have thought ahead is to brainstorming what colleges and universities they might attend.
The reader is left to question, "How is possible that somebody so young could accomplish so much?" Is it, because Ben went to an extremely good high school? Is it because Ben has a very supportive family who helped him emotionally, intellectually, and financially? Is it because Ben lives in Silicon Valley, perhaps the international capital for start up companies? While these are all true, it would a huge mistake to stop there. Unfortunately, most people do.
Below are some reasons why I think Ben has been so successful:
- He started when he was 13-year-old. Some of the most successful young entrepreneurs I know today started extremely young, even younger then Ben. I've noticed that the important lessons of business can be grasped even by grade school students so that as the young entrepreneur gets older, his or her business sophistication is equal to individuals who are decades older. Furthermore, I've noticed that starting a successful business when you're young allows you to be a meaningful contributor to the adult world. Being in the adult world and the teen world at the same time really forces you to question life in a way that most other students don't feel the urge to do until their early twenties when they enter the workforce. This introspection leads to more rapid development and maturation.
- Ben takes action and keeps going. Ben candidly shares many of the challenges he had while starting his business. It is clear that receiving 'luck' does not explain Ben's success. Ben was willing to learn the painful lessons of failure and create his own luck.
- Ben was different and he used that to his advantage. Being a young entrepreneur leads to a lot of opportunities. It leads to press, and it often leads to business people being willing to help. Ben was really able to leverage these by understanding the power of networking and how it works, being open to feedback, and asking for help. These skills ultimately allowed him to stand on the shoulders of some of the world's most successful business people and be able to process what he saw.
