Ben Casnocha is an entrepreneur and cofounder of Village Global, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has funded hundreds of startups and the co-author, with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, of The Start-Up of You: Adapt, Take Risks, Grow your Network, and Transform Your Career.

He delivers keynote speeches on business and globalization and has appeared on CBS’s The Early Show, CNN, and CNBC.

He is the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling management book The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (with LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Chris Yeh).

He started and scaled several ventures, including an e-government software company (Comcate) that currently delivers hosted CRM solutions to hundreds of local governments in America, an online education business, and a top tier boutique management training business.

In this podcast, he shares:

• His view on what the future of work will look like, and why embracing randomness and building your network will become ever more important
• Why we should stop thinking of employees as “family” or “free agents” but rather as allies on a “tour of duty”
• Whether we are experiencing today a true shift in the nature of the employer-employee contract, or whether the pendulum will swing back

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"One of the new terms is the concept of portfolio careers because we realized that in the last 10 years, there are so many people who don't just have one job. Their career is stitched together, different a lot of writers and speakers and consultants run this at the high end. And at the low end, it's gig workers and everywhere in between. And so people are stitching together kind of braiding the modern career together in a way that's very different than the 40-hour-a-week company man."

-Ben Casnocha

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Episode Timeline:

00:00—Introducing Ben + The topic of today’s episode

1:51—If you really know me you know that...

2:13—What is your definition of strategy?

2:54—Could you tell us about your book, The Startup of You?

5:44—What do you think has changed in the job market that prompted you to change the title of your book from the first to the second edition?

7:41—Can you tell us about how leadership has changed from authority to creating followership?

9:24—What are the implications of your insights into how hiring consequently changes because of these insights?

10:50—What are your thoughts of how the average tenure of CEOs has changed in the last 10 years to be much shorter?

12:58—Do you believe that the shift of power from the employer to the employee is permanent or will swing back at some point?

16:36—Could you talk to us about your idea of luck?

18:38—What put you on the path of entrepreneurship that led you to Village Global, your venture capital firm?

20:13—Where can people follow you and your work?

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Additional Resources:

Personal Page:

Thank you to our guest, our executive producer Zach Ness, our editor James Pearce, and the Outthinker team. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

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