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Alex Stephany, founder of Beam and author of The Business of Sharing, spoke to Team Reblue on how simplicity, efficiency, and financial independence can drive both social impact and sustainable business growth.

Before social impact had a playbook, Alex Stephany was already asking a different kind of question: how can we use the tools of tech to solve problems that actually matter?

A former lawyer who moved into the startup world, Alex led JustPark during the early momentum of the sharing economy and later wrote The Business of Sharing, unpacking how platforms can drive both economic and social value. But it’s his work at Beam, a social enterprise helping people experiencing homelessness into stable jobs and housing that reveals what he truly cares about: building systems that are both human and sustainable.

The thread running through his career isn’t just innovation. It’s a belief that impact doesn’t have to come at the cost of efficiency and that simplicity is often the most radical design choice we can make.

In our latest Nine Questions With series, Alex shares how Beam is using AI to ease pressure on overstretched frontline teams, why his role models have always come from his own family and what the future of shared physical space could look like in a climate-constrained world. For anyone working at the intersection of tech, sustainability and systems change, this conversation is a timely reminder: independence, clarity, and compassion aren’t just values, they’re strategic. 

Team Reblue: Alex, you've worn many hats - from law to startups to the sharing economy and now social impact with Beam. What sparked your passion for addressing social issues, and when did you realize that sustainability needed to be more than just a side interest in your career?

Alex Stephany: So I think many startup founders and entrepreneurs idolize the founders of enormous tech companies, whether it's Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, but my role models have always been people in my own family going back generations who've done social work or community work, and it's always struck me that those people would have been very jealous of the tools we have today in the form of new technologies to deliver social impacts on a scale that it's hard to imagine former generations could have achieved. I will stop, but this needs to be done sustainably. One of the formative experiences I've had in my career was when I was a lawyer, I was volunteering at a legal charity in Acton in London, and I would go to a legal clinic for which there would be hundreds of people queuing around the building waiting for free legal advice. I would see people for just 10 or 15 minutes each, people in the most difficult of circumstances, people in physical danger with terrible health problems who were homeless, and I had to try and unpick these problems for them. I was in an organization doing really valuable work, but some years later I found out that the organization, which was a charity, went bust when its corporate funders were no longer able to continue funding it. That taught me a really hard lesson that an organization needs more than to just have good intentions, it also needs to be independent. So just as we at Beam support people to financial independence into jobs and sustainable tenancies, we also are set up as a social business because we need to be financially sustainable ourselves, and we're really interested in business as a way of sustainably driving a positive impact in the world.

"When you have simple designs, simple products, they tend to be more enduring than things that are over-engineered and over-complicated."

Team Reblue: You've seen the sharing economy from the inside, with JustPark and your book, The Business of Sharing. Having been in the trenches of the sharing economy, what's something that surprised you about its real impact on sustainability that most people don't realize?

Alex Stephany: The sharing economy is really about efficiency, and efficiency is inherently a more sustainable way of doing anything. Whether that's the efficient sharing of bicycles or cars or homes or other physical assets, it tends to be more sustainable to share these things than to produce and own them on an individual basis. So I think the thing that people need to understand is that sustainability, efficiency, and affordability can really go hand in hand. One of the great examples of that is car ownership. Particularly if you're living in an urban area, then you don't need a car the whole time because for about 23 hours a day it's parked. Actually, we can be way smarter with sharing a smaller number of cars. As well as the sustainability piece, I think there's also a valuable community element as well.

"Sustainability, efficiency, and affordability can really go hand in hand."

Team Reblue: You've talked about how the sharing economy can create social capital as well as economic capital. In the context of sustainability, how do you see the human connection aspect playing a role in creating lasting change?

Alex Stephany: When I was running JustPark, I heard many fantastic stories of how people who were renting out driveways would offer great service and great human connection to people parking their cars in those people's driveways. Now running Beam, I see a similar connection playing out. At Beam, we're really bringing together different worlds. We work with many different local authorities in London, or councils as they're sometimes called, and we connect their teams with, and they refer people to us who are experiencing homelessness and refugees. Then we connect those people with landlords, with employers, with people who fund essential items for them using crowdfunding. I'm seeing a lot of those similar dynamics of the sharing economy playing out at Beam.

"In some ways AI is a radical new technology, in some ways it's a traditional technology, because what it's really doing is just another way of finding new efficiencies in how we work."

Team Reblue: From your experience at JustPark and Beam, and as someone who's worked at the intersection of tech and social impact, what's an unconventional way you think AI could help solve sustainability challenges that isn't getting enough attention?

Alex Stephany: In some ways AI is a radical new technology, in some ways it's a traditional technology, because what it's really doing is just another way of finding new efficiencies in how we work. The AI product that we're really excited about at the moment at Beam is called Magic Notes. What it's allowing is social workers and other people doing frontline roles to save over a day every week on creating documents and assessments from scratch. The way it works is very simple: social workers press a button to record a meeting, and then the software is able to turn the recording of that meeting into the very specific documents and assessments that local authorities and councils need. This is creating much more sustainable workloads and more sustainable social services organisations.

"Whereas it's possible that human beings will save ourselves, we need to do more than that."

Team Reblue: You've advised many entrepreneurs and have a strong grasp on what makes businesses work. What's the most counterintuitive lesson you've learned about making sustainability profitable?

Alex Stephany: I think for things to be sustainable, they really need to be lean and clean and simple. Simplicity is closely related to sustainability. When you have simple designs, simple products, they tend to be more enduring than things that are over-engineered and over-complicated. One thing I've learned is that you should always work hard to design things that are simple. That's something that Leonardo da Vinci knew, he said simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. And that's something that Steve Jobs knew as well. One of the things we encourage people at Beam to do is to really work and work and work on whatever it is until they've got it in the most simple form possible.

"An organization needs more than to just have good intentions, it also needs to be independent."

Team Reblue: You’ve mentioned that the sharing economy is about 'making the very best use of what we have already'. What's a radical idea you have about resource sharing that most people aren't ready to hear yet?

Alex Stephany: I think in the future people will find more efficient and intelligent ways to share different types of land and property. Today the ownership structures of land and property tend to be very rigid. People own them, and then people lease them or license them, but over time I think we'll become smarter in how we use these assets. Whether that means office space that is used by multiple companies on different days, or maybe different desks on different days to accommodate hybrid working, or whether that might mean different types of farmers or growers using different land at different times of the year for different crops or different usage, whether it's farming land or farming food or events. I think that over time people will evolve new and smart models to get the most value from physical space, particularly if we end up with less physical space because of climate change and rising sea levels.

"We need to work together to protect and preserve this incredible planet."

Team Reblue: For individuals who are passionate about sustainability and want to make a difference in their careers, what’s the most crucial piece of advice you'd give, based on your own experiences?

Alex Stephany: I always tell people who are looking for a job to just make a list of companies that grab their attention and excite them, and to just get in touch with those companies, whether or not they have open roles. At Beam we tend to be almost constantly hiring, probably have about 10 open roles at the moment, so anyone listening to this should definitely check out our open roles and get in touch if they see there is a good fit. Or even if there isn't a good fit, just send us your CV and LinkedIn profile.

"For things to be sustainable, they really need to be lean and clean and simple. Simplicity is closely related to sustainability."

Team Reblue: Finally, Alex, looking beyond current climate challenges, what future do you foresee for the planet, and what kind of legacy do you hope to leave through your work in sustainability?

Alex Stephany: I suppose I'm an optimist, so I do believe that human beings will come up with new solutions for our most pressing problems as things become more and more urgent. We saw with COVID that in times of crisis, human beings are actually very good at collaborating and coming up with novel solutions and doing things that were previously thought of as impossible. The development of COVID vaccines is a great testament to that. However, it's also undoubtedly the case that so much of what we're losing through climate change will be impossible to truly recover. Whether those are the tens of thousands of species that we are losing, or the destruction of unique ecosystems such as coral reefs, these are things that may never truly recover. So whereas it's possible that human beings will save ourselves, we need to do more than that. We need to work together to protect and preserve this incredible planet.