What is Beam? ‍

Beam is the world's first crowdfunding platform for homeless people. We take referrals of people from more than 40 charities and local authorities. We give them a caseworker who understands all of the obstacles that stand in their way and all the risks in their life. We then fund everything that they need to achieve a stable job and a stable home on our website, beam.org. We then support them into a stable job or a stable home, and give updates to their donors or their supporters along the way. So it becomes this super transparent and fulfilling way to change someone's life.‍

What came first, the problem or the solution?‍

The problem came first and I think the problem should always come first. I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes that people can make in a business, as the cliche goes, falling in love with the solution rather than the problem. The problem came first, because I spend most of my life in London where you are walking past people living on the streets. If that is not an obvious problem, then I don't know what is. I have been interested and concerned about the issue for a long time, and I had no idea what the solution looked like until I got going with Beam. My cofounder, Seb Barker, who has 10 years of experience working in the homelessness, drug and alcohol misuse services has been instrumental in building our operational model.‍

At what point in your life did you realise that you wanted to be a social entrepreneur?‍

I think the people that I had as role models growing up weren’t the Steve Jobs of the world but in fact, the hard workers in my community. My grandparents and great grandparents were really involved in community work, looked after immigrants, and generally made a real difference. So I think that had a real effect on me. Combining this with my experience of technology, and also my experience of working as a lawyer for a legal charity that gave free legal advice to anyone and everyone, shaped what I wanted to do, and led me to have a career designed to give back to the community.

‍Do you have an example of someone Beam has helped? ‍

The guy that was the inspiration for Beam was a homeless man who, every day, would sit outside my tube station. One day, I plucked up the courage to say hello to him. He told me that he would sit there each day on those steps because there was CCTV and it was therefore less likely that he'd be beaten up. We became pals and I would bring him cups of coffee, and pairs of socks when it was getting cold. Suddenly, this guy just disappeared for a month, maybe two months, and then he suddenly reappeared, but he looked completely different. He looked terrible. His beard had been shaved off and he looked 15 years older. I asked what happened, and he had been in hospital as he had a heart attack. This left me feeling frustrated and angry because nothing I've done has helped this guy. He’s in a much worse position than when we first met. I thought to myself, what does this guy need? He doesn't need another cup of coffee. He needs the skills, the support, the confidence to get back on his feet and into work. And that's going to cost more than a coffee. I thought, but what if we all just chip in? What if we could be much smarter in how we collaborate and how we use the money that we have, and make a long term difference to people? That’s it really, that's what beam.org is allowing. It's allowing anyone to become someone's support network, and support them for the long term. ‍

What has Beam achieved so far?‍

We have now helped more than 350 people experiencing homelessness to get into work and jobs, we've also launched a new service that supports people into homes, and we've supported more than 50 people with that service. ‍

What’s the vision for the future?‍

The vision is to make a real dent - first on homelessness in London, but also all kinds of other social problems in many other countries around the world. So these are groups of people who are refugees, or they've been in prison, or they've been in care, or they've got mental and physical disabilities, and to use scalable tech and a scalable operational model to create much more equality of opportunity than exists in the world today.