Jordan Casey Biography | Jordan Casey Waterford
Jordan Casey is an entrepreneur based in Waterford who founded Casey Games, an apps development firm. He launched his first game Alien Ball Vs. Humans, in February 2012.
He has also developed other games like Greenboy Touch and Food World. Casey became Europe’s youngest iOS app developers in February 2012, after releasing Alien Ball V Humans into the iTunes store which went to number one on the iTunes charts.
Jordan Casey Family
Casey lives in Waterford and was born to his parents Clyde and Louise. He was brought up together with his younger brother Isaac.
Jordan Casey Career
Casey founded Casey games a mobile a mobile games company and TeachWare which is an application for teachers to easily manage all of their student’s information in the cloud. Casey is the ambassador for BizWorld: a programme aimed at inspiring entrepreneurship in children and was also a “dragon” at the annual BIZ Factor competition in 2015. He previously worked with the European Commission on projects that can encourage youth entrepreneurship.
Being a self-taught programmer he became the youngest iOS app developers after releasing his game Alien Ball V Humans into iTunes store which went to number one on iTunes Charts. Since he has founded several startups, he has plans of bringing all his projects together as one business. His company won two business awards and was nominated for a BAFTA. In 2014 he announced his application Eventzy at the Web Summit in Dublin. Casey is also a keynote speaker. check this video of him speaking:
Jordan Casey Twitter
Tweets by CaseyGames
Jordan Casey Interview
Source: Irish American
What was the inspiration behind My Little World? Is JC [the main player character] like you?
Yeah, he’s kind of like me. When I was younger I used to go out in my Nan’s garden and there were all these slugs. I would make cardboard houses and civilizations for them. So I thought it would be cool to kind of shrink down to their size and see what the world looks like to them.
Between asking for advice, getting feedback and connecting with people, it sounds like Twitter has played a pretty big role?
Yeah. I would be nowhere without Twitter. Like, when I started doing Club Penguin blogging [Casey’s blog about the popular multi-player game was his first online endeavor], there would have been no other way to get publicity from it. I started using Twitter five years ago, maybe, and nearly everything that’s come about has been in some way because of it. I’ve made so many friends. This [IIBN] event came from Twitter, my first conference came from Twitter; it’s all Twitter. . . . It’s probably more important than email.
Have you taught your parents how to code?
I’ve attempted to, but they weren’t really into it. I think it’s pretty intimidating; it’s harder to learn a new language when you’re older.
But your younger brother is interested?
Yeah Isaac is, he’s 10. But instead of the blogging he’s really into YouTube-ing videos about games, and the latest news on whatever game he’s playing. I’ve taught him how to do HTML, and he’s interested, but he’s sort of where I was when I didn’t know if I was actually going to do this or just have it as a hobby. Hopefully he gets into it.
When did you first know that coding was something you liked and were good at?
Well, when I released my website for the Club Penguin game, I didn’t think much about it, but then other people who were playing the game started visiting it and they said it was really good, probably one of the best they’d seen, even, so that’s sort of when I realized ‘This is what I want to do.’ I learned a lot more programming languages and I kept working on the website for a while. And then I was looking at other fields I could explore and started thinking about games. That was about a year after I got enough hits on the website to make money from it, and I just knew it was something I really wanted to do.
Your next project is pretty different from the games. Where did the idea for TeachWare come from?
I noticed that people in tech companies are so big on education, but there’s nothing there for the teachers. The biggest competitor is basically Excel, which costs $100, and then if you want to get the iPad app you have to enter it all manually, transferring from program to program. So I think this could be a game-changer because it’s the first cloud app of its kind, but it doesn’t present the cloud in a big, tech-heavy way. I’ve tested it out with a lot of teachers and they seem enthusiastic. It’s going to be free and online, so you just create an account and student profiles with all their contact information, their homework, attendance, exam management, etc.
At the conferences, what has it been like to talk in front of so many people and other high-profile CEOs?
It’s been pretty nerve-wracking. Like when I started last year I really wasn’t confident at all. In school, I always went red and didn’t want to talk. My first conference [The Cannes Lion festival last June] was one of the biggest I’ve done, actually. It was about 3,000 people there and 20,000 watching the live stream. But I realized that I’m really nervous beforehand, but once I get on and start talking, I just think about it as a normal conversation. So I get more used to it every time.
What advice do you give to people who want to do what you do?
Start young. Think of it as a head start, really. In 10 years I’ll be 23 and I’ll already have 14 years experience of what it’s like to work, and that will be very important. In the next 10 years, so many things are going to be digitized, especially education, so start as young as possible, is what I’d say.