My Start-Up Life

My Start-Up Life

Ben Casnocha, 19, author of the new book “My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young C.E.O. Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley,” offers clues.

As he recounts in his book, Ben was 14 when he started Comcate Inc., a Web-based service for helping local governments manage customer service. He called on numerous mentors, many of them initially strangers or casual acquaintances. Some talented and busy people, presumably impressed by the young man, decided to support his enterprise. He also asked for outright grants to get his business off the ground and to help finance his version of the American dream.

American youths are so successful at entrepreneurship in part because so many older and wealthier people are willing to help them. The broader American success at philanthropy, then, lays the groundwork for American entrepreneurship. By global standards, Americans may have looser networks of friends and family, but Americans are more willing to help relative strangers, and this often helps business.