Category Archives: Friends of Ben

I walked into my favorite cafe today to meet a friend who was flipping through Valley Life Quarterly, a magazine published by the San Jose Business Journal.

He opened to a page: "Here’s a look at the area’s most influential bloggers" the headline said. Jonathan Schwartz, Craig Newmark, Battelle, Dan Gillmor, Lessig, Om Malik, Mike Arrington, Ross Mayfield, Esther Dyson….and then some random high school kid wearing a pretentious bow tie.

If you want to know who’s going to run the world in a few years, then check out Casnocha. This 18-year-old gives us insight into what it’s like to run the Silicon Valley Junto, think about the future of globalization, and make plans to attend his high school basketball game. He is truly a blogosphere original who shows us his birthday best wishes from the likes of Intel’s Les Vadasz, VC Heidi Roizen, and the deputy mayor of Los Angeles (among many others).

OK, I said, who the f submitted my name and bio? My eyes move to the top of the page again. The rest of the headline says, "…as compiled by the Connector Group, a SF firm that specializes in influence marketing by connecting product marketers with influentials and tastemakers." Ah, Auren, you hyper connected PR maven you.

Network: Ben Casnocha –> My Blog –> Dan Grossman

Google Search: "Dan Grossman" + Venrock

I usually profile people in my Friends of Ben series who I’ve known for awhile, but this time, like I did with Colin Wiel, I couldn’t wait to toot Dan’s horn.

Dan Grossman is a principal at Venrock Associates, a Menlo Park and New York based VC firm. He’s been reading my blog and I started reading his and last week he emailed me asking if I wanted to get together when he was in town. I was on the fence — I’m trying to cut back on things as I focus on my writing and travel. I ultimately set up a time to meet with Dan yesterday evening.

We had a simply awesome conversation. Stellar conversations take two to tango and Dan and we had a connection that really fired me up. We started with business. He has some cool entrepreneurial ideas and is ready to dive back in to start-up mode. Then we moved to publishing and writing. Then foreign policy and politics. Dan’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and knows his stuff. Since we both adore The Atlantic (and other similar publications), we could both cite articles without unnecessary explanation. We finished up discussing civic engagement and productivity and personal improvement. 1.5 hours later I left for my next dinner with tons of energy (and I had a great dinner too with my friend Trevor).

The theory behind the Silicon Valley Junto is when business people come together to talk about non-business things, the conversation is rich since we all can speak the "same" language. This was true last night — both being steeped in business, we could allude to business texts and concepts to explain non-business points. For example, the UN is to the U.S. what the Board of Directors is to a CEO (both are tools). Or, can we extend Jim Collins’ Level Five leadership to churches or governments?

I love when people bring their A game to life, business, and conversations. I love people who can bring to bear an intellectual presence and a likable interpersonal style.

Dan — I’m excited you’re moving to SF from the Least Coast and I look forward to hanging with you again soon!

An old friend from grammar school came by my high school the other day to visit.

He got in to West Point — a terrific feat — and ships in June to start a multi-year process of becoming an officer in the military. He wants to serve his country. In observing his buff body and demeanor, it struck me that he’s the classic, militaristic, "let’s go kick some butt" kind of guy. I guess that’s what it takes to go in a warzone and kill the enemy. I’m proud of his patriotism and enthusiasm for serving his country. We should all be proud. I thought of a post I did in September 2004 quoting from Newsweek:

Please come back safely. Please remember to watch your back. Help where you can with the skills that you have. Use your humor to protect yourself. Use your social skills to help people. You have friends, so don’t be afraid to use us as a sounding board. We wish you well. I wish you well. And… James? Most of all, I wish you peace.

I stopped by Renee Blodgett‘s house last night for an "untech" dinner — no talk of technology allowed. Similar to the Junto, but way more strict! It was a fun couple hours. Good chats with Auren Hoffman, Josh Weinberg, and Mick Malisic, among others. We talked about religion, neoconservatism, nature vs. nurture, politics, education, globalization, urbanization and cities, and many other provocative issues! It’s always interesting to have these discussions, but you have to be careful: too much time talking about important topics at a cocktail hour level, and one becomes reliant on sound bites while deep, critical analysis goes by the wayside.

Here’s a photo of me at Renee’s.

I spent St. Patrick’s day meeting some really cool Friends of Ben.

On the drive I listened to David Sedaris Me Talk Pretty One Day (very good, but I liked Dress Your Family better). First stop was Palo Alto to catch up briefly with my "old" friend Chris Yeh. After dishing out some top secret high school gossip, I raced over to the Google campus where I met Chris Sacca (biz dev/special projects) and Eric Case (Blogger) for lunch.

I’d never been to Google before and didn’t know what to expect. I spent 10 minutes looking for parking in their visitor lots, which I’m sure is intentional! Scarcity makes it seem like your visit is even more special and rare. Wandering through the campus, I could feel the energy and passion in the air. It really felt like special things were happening on the physical grounds. By the same token, I also sensed a slight odor of arrogance.

I met up with Chris and Eric, exceedingly kind and gracious hosts, and headed over to the massive cafeteria (where I was able to have a few words with my friend Charles Hudson, a new Google hire, who I know from my BizWorld Foundation duties). Chris originally reached out to me after reading the USA Today article, Brad Feld’s post, and my own blog. So, we all had some background on each other, which helps conversation enormously! The food was amazing and Chris gave me a tour of some of the other facilities — it’s a sweet set-up. Eric gave me a Blogger hooded sweatshirt, which will allow me to go even longer without buying a new piece of clothing. Good guys.

After Google I drove a few minutes across the way to Plaxo where I met Tod Sacerdoti, Director of Business Development there. Tod is an awesome guy; really nice, sharp, and thoughtful. He has an eclectic set of activities and interests, many of which overlap with my own. A great chat.

The last stop was at Comcate’s Mountain View satellite office, where I hung out for a couple hours. The first hour I spent doing email on his wi-fi while my colleague and friend Olivier finished a conference call where wonderful words like "integrations" and "API’s" flowed sweetly through the air. We spent our time focusing on the sales pitch for our code enforcement software and pumping up the PowerPoint to be more Beyond Bullets-esque.

I drove home, listening to Sedaris and doing a few calls. When I got back to my house at 7:15 PM I saw a new message on my home voicemail. "How odd," I thought, "No one calls me on that number." I played the message — it was from a TV producer who’s involved in a pretty interesting project. He said, "I’m looking for a Ben Casnocha…." Shit – I wonder what the message machine greeting is on the home line. I called my house from my cell phone to hear the answering machine. Sure enough, it was my brother’s recording from months ago: "Yo what up, you’ve reached John, Alex, and Ben, so um, leave a message and we’ll hit you back. Aite, peeeace!" A professional greeting, no?

After calling the guy back, I walked down the street with my Economist, ordered my favorite Bon Jour crepe and bagel, ate a leisurely dinner, and came back and fell into bed. A good day.