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Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

ycombinator.com

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Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#21

Post by pinko »

andygcook wrote: post #8
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #2

This is really cool, but I'm curious how an investment in this is different than a charitable contribution. The contribution is awesome for the network it introduces Watsi to, but I can't imagine there will ever be a return on this kind of investment. (This is not meant to sound negative. I am truly excited to see it, interested to see what the YC network can bring to it, and very curious about the investment thinkin…

If it takes off and is successful on a massive scale, I'm sure they will find a method to monetize it other than transaction fees on donations. One example that I can think of off the top of my head is to charge medical device manufacturers or pharmaceutical companies a fee to market their products the recently funded with direct messages or traditional advertising.

I don't think this ("monetization", for profit) is planned -- and if it were I and many others would have a big problem with it. See pg's comment above.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#22

Post by tikhonj »

pg wrote: post #3
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #2

This is really cool, but I'm curious how an investment in this is different than a charitable contribution. The contribution is awesome for the network it introduces Watsi to, but I can't imagine there will ever be a return on this kind of investment. (This is not meant to sound negative. I am truly excited to see it, interested to see what the YC network can bring to it, and very curious about the investment thinkin…

There is no difference; it is simply a charitable contribution.

Will they also be going through dinners, office-hours and the like?

I could see this being a good way to help new non-profits get over the initial hump of raising awareness, getting administrative issues sorted out and so on. Certainly a service worth more than just the money provided.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#23

Post by tptacek »

This is great. I did what you asked and used the site and it is indeed extraordinarily compelling. I might suggest a move away from Paypal (only because the Paypal checkout experience is more intrusive and annoying than the state of the art).

Our annual all-hands summit is next week, and we'll look for ways to work this into our charity match programs. Many people on HN have companies with employees; we were told about running charity matches by other friends who have companies and let me pass the message along: they work really well. Match programs have generated more goodwill for us than bonus programs. Start a match program!

I have a question:

The big charity in this space is Partners In Health, which has an extremely positive reputation (their cofounder is also now the President of the World Bank), spends 94% of their funding on program expenses, and has a CEO who makes less than 6 figures. (PIH is apparently a medical partner for Watsi).

Is the advantage of Watsi over PIH that 100% of funds go to program expenses, rather than 94%? Or is it that fine-grained funding is more compelling and will thus elicit more donations?

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#24

Post by seeingfurther »

One could think of this non-profit funding as YC's own charity donation. I like this type of donation much more than just hard cash. YC is committing what it does best, building great organizations around amazing teams. I wish more people, companies and orgs took this approach to donations.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#25

Post by kevinalexbrown »

Aside from the human connection mentioned in the post, by far the most compelling aspect to me is the "fixed" attribute. There's something so satisfying about isolating a problem, then fixing it.

Many charities feel like an investment. This feels like a transaction.

Edit: Here by transaction, I mean it's something that has a very high chance that it's working out. When I order a shirt online, there's a high probability it will get to me. When I fund a new t-shirt company on Kickstarter, it's less certain.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#26

Post by chaseadam17 »

tptacek wrote: post #23

This is great. I did what you asked and used the site and it is indeed extraordinarily compelling. I might suggest a move away from Paypal (only because the Paypal checkout experience is more intrusive and annoying than the state of the art). Our annual all-hands summit is next week, and we'll look for ways to work this into our charity match programs. Many people on HN have companies with employees; we were told abo…

All of the treatments funded on Watsi are provided by our partner organizations (names listed on the patient profiles) and our first partner, Nyaya Health, is a Partners in Health clinic in Nepal.

So in short, the benefit of Watsi is both of those you described. 1) 100% of funds directly fund treatments and 2) those treatments are performed by great organizations like Nyaya.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#28

Post by suchow »

This is a neat idea.

I have an unimportant question. PG's post says "They even eat the credit card processing fees", but Watsi's FAQ says, "As part of the cost of the treatment, we have included PayPal credit card processing fees (2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). These PayPal fees are unavoidable, and no portion of the fees go to Watsi."

Who is right?

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#29

Post by jtchang »

This is amazing. I love how they are moving so fast they simply publish results to a Google Doc spreadsheet.

This foreshadows an era where non-profits must aggressively publish their spending and compete on how lean they become. My guess is there are going to be a lot of niche sites that perform exactly like Watsi.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#30

Post by jk4930 »

sethbannon wrote: post #7

Very happy to see this. At the very least, it's great news for the nonprofit world, which needs desperately to learn some of the basic the lessons of the startup world: fail fast, iterate, focus on your users, and more.

Would be interesting to observe how the established nonprofits react to this. Many of them do the following: Make their target audience (who they claim to care for) more dependent (i.e., don't solve the problem, just give some temporal ease) and take money from third parties (state, private donors) that don't control them.

My guess is that they would come up with many arguments against this startup-ish approach and would lobby for legal barriers.

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