Ben Casnocha

Ben Casnocha is an award-winning entrepreneur and author from Silicon Valley. He is co-author with LinkedIn founder/chairman Reid Hoffman of the #1 New York Times bestselling book The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. He is also co-author of  The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age based on his article in Harvard Business Review entitled Tours of Duty: The New Employer-Employee Compact. Ben has separately written for Newsweek, the American Enterprise Institute, NPR’s Marketplace and the U.S. State Department.

In addition to his writing, Ben is a technology entrepreneur. He founded Comcate, Inc., a leading e-government software company, at age 14. He wrote a book about his experience titled My Start-Up Life. PoliticsOnline named him one of the “25 most influential people in the world of internet and politics.” He also incubates and advises internet entrepreneurs at Wasabi Ventures. BusinessWeek named Ben “one of America’s top young entrepreneurs.” And dozens of outlets have covered his work including CNN, Charlie Rose, and The Economist.

Ben Casnocha is an accomplished world traveler and speaker. He has spoken to tens of thousands of people around the world. He’s traversed alleyways in Morocco, deserts in northern Chile, and busy city streets in China to lead inspiring conversations about entrepreneurship, careers, and the future of work.

The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Network Age

If you want to recruit, train, and retain the best people for your company, understand this: the old employer-employee compact is dead. In today’s entrepreneurial age, the best employees are not pledging lifelong loyalty to your company — they want to sign up for “tours of duty.” They want to be “entrepreneurial” at work. Ben presents a revolutionary way to make a new talent alliance work for your company.

The Start-Up of You

In a keynote based on his New York Times bestselling book with LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Ben presents a blueprint for how to thrive in the new world of work. The key: learn to think like an entrepreneur and treat your career like it’s a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you. Learn the Silicon Valley strategies that can jump-start your career, from crafting flexible career plans, to building genuine professional relationships, to finding breakout opportunities. This is a bold guide to thriving in a world where every professional must be the entrepreneur of his or her own life.

Life Entrepreneurship for Students

Entrepreneur and author Ben Casnocha started his first company at age 12 and wrote his first book at 19. In a keynote aimed to inspire students to take action to improve both themselves and the world, Ben presents a blueprint for how to think outside the box and take an entrepreneurial approach to life. In this inspirational yet practical keynote, students will learn from a generational peer the entrepreneurial strategies that will advance themselves no matter their industry of interest and will feel empowered to confront the economic challenges facing their generation.