Stories of Sweet Social Impact Vol. 5
With Gordon Casey, Founder of Brave
Stories of Sweet Social Impact is our monthly member series. Each month we sit down with a HiVE member or alumni to learn more about what makes them tick and the work that they’re doing to change the world.
This month, we talked to Gordon Casey who is building an online platform for urgent acts of kindness, Brave. We like Gordon because he always shares his coconut macarons AND he left his job as a hedge fund lawyer for social impact. But mostly the macarons.
THE LOW-DOWN:
Name: Gordon Casey
HiVE Member Since: January 2015
From the smallest act of kindness to an act that could save someone’s life, Brave wants to use technology to nudge our behaviour a couple of degrees closer to a world where we think nothing of helping each other every day.
What children’s character do you relate with most? Why?
Peter Pan: I always felt (and still do) that people give kids’ concerns short shrift because they’re not “important” in the grand scheme of things. As a kid that was frustrating because while I knew that my problems (and hurts and pains) weren’t serious, they were serious to me, I thought that should be sufficient. And as an adult I can see that most of our concerns are pretty trivial too… And just like Peter Pan I have this thing about living forever…
When you graduated high school what did you want to do?
I wanted to become a lawyer and “save the world”.
What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t yet?
Go to space.
What books are at your bedside?
By my actual bedside are Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus by Douglas Rushkoff; Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman; The Baby Whisperer, by Tracy Hogg; and King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard. And on my desk at The HiVE I’m reading Faraday, Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field; Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe; Hooked by Nir Eyal; and Towards a Pre-emptive Social Enterprise by Matthew Manos.
Before founding Brave, what was the most unusual or interesting job you’ve ever had?
I sold extra heavy duty garbage bags door-to-door in Cape Town.
What does social impact mean to you?
It means making a difference in a way that matters. It doesn’t need to matter to me, but if it matters to you, really matters to you, that’s social impact.
What brought you to HiVE?
Before I moved to Vancouver I’d been looking up co-working spaces online and I loved the sound of the HiVE. Then I met Eesmyal in San Francisco in December and I knew that I just had to come here. It was meant to be…
What was your first impression of HiVE?
So I got my first impression before I moved here, from the emails — I’d seen the space and loved it, and the idea behind it, but the emails were my first real taste. And reading the messages I could sense the caring within the community here — through messages from the HiVE team, and the small acts of kindness everyone performs for each other almost daily. It was so lovely!
I was also setting up a co-working space in Curacao as I left so I kept forwarding this stuff to my partner on that project, Karien, and we’d get inspired by this vision of community having been already fulfilled at HiVE.
What are your hopes for your industry?
I’m not sure what industry that is but if I pretend I’m part of the tech industry for a moment then my hope is that it starts to pay attention to the “real” problems in the world instead of building Uber for cat litter boxes. Et cetera.
What’s one thing you wish people knew about Brave?
Brave is starting as an app (for urgent acts of kindness). But we have a vision of communities filled with people that help each other, that believe we’re all intrinsically good and caring. We’re designing everything around that — which we believe means radical transparency, open-source code, creative commons copyright and the coop ownership model.
What do you love about being a HiVE member?
Krystal was asking some of us this a couple of Salad Clubs ago… my response was that I love the culture. I believe that’s what a co-working space provides us smaller operations — a pre-baked culture. And the HiVE’s culture is the same culture I hope Brave will have: it’s caring, it’s nurturing, it’s giving and it assumes that you have good intentions. It gives people the benefit of the doubt.
What’s the best/worst thing that has happened to you since working at HiVE?
The best thing is definitely the individual connections that I’ve made, each one — the people here are just fucking amazing (can I say that?). The worst thing is probably something that I’ve said to someone that was inconsiderate or rude — usually I realize too late when I’m acting like a jerk…
Is there any type of support that you’re looking for, or a particular project you want to share?
Well, firstly, if anyone is going through a period of transition and would like a sympathetic ear… or if anyone would simply like a listener, or in-person feedback on absolutely anything — I would love to help!
And back to being selfish: I would love it if everyone signed up to join the Brave community — we need all the help and support we can get! I’ve also been exploring complementary currencies for the past few years and would love to nerd out on that with anyone.
