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It was hard to miss Ben Casnocha on the campus of University High School, located in the heart of San Francisco. He was the guy with the highest test scores, captain of the varsity basketball team, and editor-in-chief of the student newspaper.      

It was also hard to miss Ben Casnocha in the booming Silicon Valley business community. As CEO of Comcate, Inc. (www.comcate.com), an e-government software company he founded at age 14, Ben’s work was frequently in the news, creating headlines for media outlets like CNN and USA Today.

At the age of 12, Ben got the idea for his first company when his sixth-grade class was assigned to build a community service web site. “We brainstormed ideas and eventually decided that citizens didn’t have a good vehicle through which to complain about city issues — potholes, tree limbs down, eye sores, and so forth,” recalls Ben. “The class didn’t do anything with the idea, so over the summer, I decided to build a web site around that concept.”

Ben’s web site allowed California residents to submit complaints about municipal issues, which he would direct to the appropriate local government. “In the process of routing complaints and talking with local agencies, I learned first hand that while some governments were quite good at dealing with feedback and complaints, many weren’t so good,” says Ben. Improving customer service at local governments was what inspired Ben to start his second business, Comcate.

Ben continuously amazed those around him with his ability to carefully balance school with running a successful business. “The hardest part was the ‘context switching’ — ie, doing a conference call outside and then walking back into the school environment and sitting in a class,” recalls Ben, who recently authored the book, My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley.

Now 19, Ben is taking a year off from school before he starts college in the fall. During this time, he is traveling, writing in his blog, and working at a venture capital firm. He looks forward to attending school and is anxious to see what the future holds. He says, “I have many different interests, some of which have nothing to do with business, and I’d like to pursue them all in this too-short life!” HBM