Brigade: new social network from Facebook co-founder aims to 'repair democracy'

Sean Parker invested several million dollars in the startup last year, and he and CEO Matt Mahan believe they can inject life into Americans' sense of civic duty

Last fall, Sean Parker, the technology billionaire behind Napster, Facebook and Spotify, invested several million dollars into a risky stealth startup, Brigade, which has the ambitious aim of increasing mass civic participation.

He takes comfort in the fact that Brigade's wide-eyed goal "is a little bit more achievable than it may seem at first blush, because turnout is so low, the average American is so disengaged, that even a few marginal changes - a few percentage points one way or the other - has a huge impact".