And a child will lead them — down the garden path. PlaySpan is garnering buzz because its cofounder, 12-year-old Arjun Mehta, hauled in $6.5 million in venture capital (although it's suspected that his father and CEO Karl Mehta is using Arjun as a mere promotional tool). Talk about a startup in need of adult supervision. Arjun makes teenage entrepreneurs like Jessica Mah and Comcate founder Ben Casnocha look like pikers. The founder's age, however, is distracting reporters from the real question: Why did this company snag so much cash?

Ben Casnocha, teenage entrepreneur, on his ping pong game (but also applicable to his business pursuits): "I plan on improving quite a bit in college. Right now I'm all muscle; I need more finesse. I need more spin in my game." [Ben Casnocha: The Blog]

Teenage entrepreneur Ben Casnocha experiences the death of a former classmate. Not someone he really knew, mind you, but close enough to provide conveniently timed talking points for his upcoming "intellectual salon" on death. [ben.casnocha.com]

So we hear that Peter Thiel, the former PayPal CEO turned venture capitalist, threw a really great Fourth of July party. Fabulous, even. Ben Casnocha, the teenage goth entrepreneur, attended, naturally, but it appears that our invitations were lost in the mail. A pity. For those lucky few who made the guest list, care to send in more reports?

Most teenagers are convinced of their own immortality. But not Ben Casnocha, the famed teenage entrepreneur, book author, and ladies' man. A week from tomorrow, Casnocha is convening a salon to discuss a "'CEO approach' to dying." Never mind that Casnocha hasn't figured out a "CEO approach" to, say, actually doing business. I'm sure that he'll assemble a room full of graybeards who will listen raptly as he gives his thoughts on the hereafter — even though they're on much better speaking terms with the Grim Reaper than Casnocha. After the jump, the full invite.

"He's the Doogie Howser, MD of software startups, except for the fact that he probably has no idea who Doogie Howser is, given that the show went off the air when he was 4 years old, and, frankly, at age 4 he was probably too busy working on his second IPO to watch much television." [Joel on Software]

NICK DOUGLAS — After my boss (and this site's editor) wrote a bitchy little post making fun of the author and self-described "very young CEO" Ben Casnocha for running a mere million-dollar business (Come on, he had six years to build it! Nevermind that in year 1, he was 12) he asked for a "rude" interview with Casnocha. Below, the author of "My Startup Life" explains why an inexperienced 19-year-old can teach "established businesspeople" basic principles and why Marc Benioff, the old-guard exec who wrote Casnocha's foreword, isn't as nasty as everyone says.

Regarding entrepreteen Ben Casnocha's claim to have attended a party where he and Google founder Sergey Brin were the only two men in a room of 40 women, Heidi Rozen of Mobius Venture Capital wrote in to defend "Sergey's honor and Ben's veracity":

At least when it comes to a Google cofounder. The wide-eyed 18-year-old entrepreneur and youthful wisdom-font says: