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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

#31

Post by tptacek »

chaseadam17 wrote: post #26
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.

Is there a kind of care I'd be funding using Watsi that I wouldn't be funding as effectively if I routed contributions directly to PIH?

Or is the big advantage to Watsi (from a 1000ft view) that it creates an especially compelling way to get people to contribute on-the-ground operating funds to places like PIH?

The latter is certainly a huge big deal, in case I sound skeptical. I'm just trying to refine my understanding of how all this stuff works.

Congratulations on all of this.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#32

Post by tnorthcutt »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #13
eduardordm wrote: post #6

pg, I wrote this minutes ago in a thread about the 3rd world. If you ever come across a startup that solves this please fund them: "The biggest problems right now involve education and health. Example: 60-80% health problems follow the same pattern: you see a doctor, he asks for blood/urine tests, you get the results, go back to the doctor for a prescription. Build something that the poor can explain their symptoms a…

This would be illegal in the US AFAIK. The law and the US government are the biggest barriers to medical innovation right now.

Isn't eduardordm specifically talking about 3rd world countries, e.g. not the U.S?

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#33

Post by jmcgough »

I really like the transparency - with a lot of nonprofits, I feel like I need to look into their expenditures to see where my donation is really going and to figure out if it's worthwhile. Watsi feels a lot more like kickstarter but directly targeted at helping individual people. Very cool idea.

How do they pay for operations costs - is there a separate donations channel?

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#34

Post by tptacek »

jk4930 wrote: post #30
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 w…

Watsi is already working with huge names in this space. PIH, one of the best known, funds on-the-ground medical care in places like Haiti and Subsaharan Africa. I don't think anyone in these places cares how "dependent" they are on PIH; their kids are living with broken femurs, infected bones, cataracts, and hernias.

Charities are not going to lobby against Watsi.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#36

Post by wave »

The only suggestion I have is that it would be nice to see the patient's profiles get updated after being funded and treatment was given. We all like to see how our donations are making noticeable difference in people's lives.

I really like what Watsi is doing. They even "eat the credit card processing fees"

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#37

Post by TeMPOraL »

tnorthcutt wrote: post #32
dreamdu5t wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be illegal in the US AFAIK. The law and the US government are the biggest barriers to medical innovation right now.

Isn't eduardordm specifically talking about 3rd world countries, e.g. not the U.S?

Probably some of the US regulations would be relevant for US-based startups trying to develop and test the technology locally, even if it is to be used in 3rd world countries later.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#38

Post by jkuria »

This is really great to see. I am just curious, how do they ensure that the funds are actually used for the intended person's health issues? How do you prevent scammers and posers who just want to get money? I have a bit of experience here and would say it is a non trivial problem if you do not have an operation on the ground. You could donate to organizations that you trust but then you get back to the same old problem: Distance from the human face and actual life you are impacting.

For those of you who want to donate to non health related issues there is also SeeYourImpact.org founded by Scott Oki, one of Microsoft's early execs. They also ensure 100% of the donation goes to the person and absorb all the overhead expenses.

Shameless plug: For our Hacker News Clone for African startus, business and technology we will be running ads for SeeYourImpact.org but strictly for educational needs. Check out the site here: http://AfriTech.org/about.htm Actual news stories on front page: http://AfriTech.org

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#40

Post by bdcs »

suchow wrote: post #28

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?

Good question. Also, PayPal fees are only unavoidable at PayPal. Would it be a conflict of interest, on pg's part, to include donations via bitcoins using Coinbase? If so, what if a competitor, such as BitPay, was used?
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