Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

I'm a co-founder of Turquoise Health (https://turquoise.health/). We are working to improve US healthcare by exposing the prices that are negotiated at all levels of the insurance billing process and building tools where price negotiations happen in a competitive market instead of in secret.

The goal is to drive down healthcare prices using the levers that are available. Right now, there are often 10x price differences between two providers for the same service (or even between two patients at the same hospital) because all pricing is negotiated in a vacuum separately by every insurance company. It leads to a very distorted system with little downward price pressure.

We don't have a magic wand that we can wave to "fix healthcare", but we feel like we are driven by having a positive impact in the most pragmatic way possible. The premise will sound strange to people outside the US where heath care prices aren't defined by what insurance plan your job provides, but it is a huge market in the US where a ton of GDP is mis-spent on healthcare and ripe for disruption.

(And yes, we are hiring!)

I've been at OPAL-RT for about a year now, providing real-time simulation tools for power electronics. So clients include electric vehicle manufacturers, renewables companies, grid operators... pretty much everyone who is involved in electricity, which is a lot. The exec team is also directly committed to being good, so work-life balance + conditions + compensation are great and they contribute something like 2% of net profits to local charities and organisations.

And yes we're profitable, demand is going up because of the push for electrification everywhere and we are hiring very aggressively. Roles have geographic designation, but can pretty much be from anywhere

https://www.opal-rt.com/careers-search-job-posting/

Here's a list of startups that have a positive social impact while still paying competitive salaries and showing promising growth:

Fintech:

Forage (https://www.joinforage.com), building Stripe for EBT, i.e. food stamps

Nearside (https://www.nearside.com), banking for small businesses

KeeperTax (https://www.keepertax.com), tax savings for independent contractors

Bio/Pharma/Healthcare:

Q Bio (https://q.bio), creating a more data-driven approach to health

Reverie Labs (https://www.reverielabs.com), accelerating drug development with ML

PathAI (https://www.pathai.com), increasing diagnosis accuracy

Benchling (https://www.benchling.com), cloud for biotech R&D

Mental Health:

Alma (https://helloalma.com), providing easier access to therapy

Headway (https://headway.co), same as Alma

Juniper (https://www.juniperplatform.com), workflow tools for autism providers

Real Estate:

Orchard (https://orchard.com), buy your next home before you sell

Ribbon (https://www.ribbonhome.com), cash offers to improve home access

Hardware:

Sofar Ocean (https://www.sofarocean.com), collecting ocean data

Climate:

Watershed (https://watershed.com), platform for enterprises to reduce carbon emissions

Sweep (https://www.sweep.net)

Pachama (https://pachama.com)

Defense (if you believe that Western influence is positive impact):

Anduril (https://www.anduril.com), building high-tech defense products and reducing gov waste

Palantir (https://www.palantir.com), building data products for government

I work at a medical device company. I definitely feel our products can change the lives of many people for the better. The business side of healthcare in the US is pretty dirty and work sometimes can be very slow due to regulation and the need to prevent patient harm (no "move fast and break things" here). But overall I think my work contributes to producing technology to make the world a better place.

mullvad is always looking to hire more people: https://www.mullvad.careers/