Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 173 posts

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#81

Post by woodhull »

I'm pretty sure that GiveWell (whom I adore) wouldn't like Watsi very much.

It doesn't maximize the utility of donations to spend lots of money saving the lives of a handful of people vs. other interventions that can save the lives of many more people suffering from diseases like malaria at a much lower cost per patient than the interventions that Watsi is promoting.

I think Watsi donors will feel good about helping specific people, but I'm personally interested in my donations actually being maximally impactful. If you want to save the most lives per dollar, the sort of extraordinary treatments that Watsi funds are not a great way to do it.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#82

Post by h2s »

FrojoS wrote: post #79
zopticity wrote: post #73

Wow, I'm really taken away the fact that you're using PayPal. First of all, you're in YC, where's the brotherly support of using other YC companies? You got WePay and Stripe, and you're not using either.

One step after the other. I just donated, despite ever having used PayPal before, and with a non-american credit card. And - it worked within a few minutes. I have my objections to PayPal, too, and would like to see alternatives but that doesn't have to be the focus right now.

You're right, and I understand your point, but I would also like to add my voice to those pressuring Watsi for a PayPal alternative. Personally I had pressed "Fund Treatment" and was 100% committed to converting until PayPal loaded. I don't have a PayPal account any more and I won't reopen it for anybody, not even Watsi.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#83

Post by chaseadam17 »

st0p wrote: post #75

I just donated some euro's, and I truely believe those euro's will be well spend. But it feels wierd (and somehow wrong) to crowdfund someone's health. I'm not questioning watsi, they are in it for the right reasons. But is crowdfunding something important as health for poor people the solution? I think everyone is trying to do good here, but nobody is solving the real problems.

Thanks for the donation, the patient (and we) really appreciate it.

You bring up a really interesting point. Is crowdfunding a sustainable solution for healthcare? It's something we think about a lot as a team.

Right now, there are people dying for lack of available and relatively cheap medical treatments, simply because they can't afford them. We think the only moral thing to do is fund their treatments.

However, is this sustainable? I'd argue that it is for two reasons.

First, the organizations we partner with are all working towards fairly obvious sustainable solutions. Some establish public-private partnerships, others cross-subsidize, and others have a very strong focus on training local doctors (some do all three - we require at least one).

Second, and without getting into a really deep discussion here, only about 40 out of 200 countries in the world have a formal healthcare system. And those systems that work best are, for the most part, universal healthcare systems financed by the government (i.e. the costs are crowdfunded via taxes). However, with the world becoming smaller by the second, is it too crazy to think that Watsi might one day be the first truly universal healthcare system?

What if instead of a mandatory tax, of which a % is allocated to national healthcare, human compassion was enough to fuel a global healthcare system? For the first time in history, the internet is making this feasible. The only question that remains is whether human compassion is enough to solve one of the world's greatest challenges.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#85

Post by chaseadam17 »

woodhull wrote: post #81

I'm pretty sure that GiveWell (whom I adore) wouldn't like Watsi very much. It doesn't maximize the utility of donations to spend lots of money saving the lives of a handful of people vs. other interventions that can save the lives of many more people suffering from diseases like malaria at a much lower cost per patient than the interventions that Watsi is promoting. I think Watsi donors will feel good about helping…

Charitable giving isn't a zero sum game. Instead of taking a piece of the charitable pie, we're expanding it by offering donors and patients a new opportunity.

If Watsi didn't exist, many of the patients on our site would have likely died. How do you quantify that impact? How do you prove that all the donations made via Watsi would have been allocated to some other cause had we not existed?

Also, I'd like to say that we really respect GiveWell's work. Quantifying social impact is a really tough challenge, and it's great to see such an intelligent team working on the problem.

Furthermore, we actually think they'd be big fans of donations made on Watsi, at least those made to patients at Nyaya Health, which was rated one of GiveWell's "Standout Organizations" last year.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#86

Post by chaseadam17 »

corin_ wrote: post #71
chaseadam17 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. It's all about personal opinion. There are currently tons of organizations that enable people to fund a cause, but nearly none that let you fund something as specific as an individual treatment. We're providing a new, more direct and transparent, alternative. Oftentimes there is institutional support for specific "mainstream" conditions (e.g. HIV, TB, etc.) and as a result, some patients who are in uniqu…

I wonder if everyone who has come across both options (broad vs. specific) choses one and sticks with that, or whether some people like both and split their donations? While you'd obviously always prefer to expand the pie rather than just take a piece, there's nothing wrong with the latter - like you said, your approach can help people who slip through the gaps, so even if the pie doesn't expand, your taking a piece…

Great insight. We're in the process of creating a "General Fund" on Watsi to help us answer that very question.

Donors that are interested in maximizing impact, and not necessarily interested in helping a specific person, can give to that fund. We'll then use those donations to support organizational projects (e.g. $1 vaccinations and the like).

We're considering leveraging an organization like GiveWell to help us identify organizations and projects that will be beneficiaries of the general fund.

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#88

Post by philwelch »

tinco wrote: post #77
philwelch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, it's plainly obvious that people in those other countries need our help more than people in the United States. What other concern is there? "I'd like to help people in MY country" is just a vaguely nationalistic bigotry.

It is not so obvious. There's a lot of suffering going on in your country too. Charity comes from the heart, and where you should direct your love is your own choice. If you feel the people in your country are closer to you, there's no shame in helping them before others. We are human after all.

> If you feel the people in your country are closer to you

That's the nationalistic bigotry I was talking about. That's like saying if there was a charity that only helped white people, maybe I should contribute to that because I feel that people of European descent are "closer to me".

Re: Meet Watsi, Y Combinator's First Nonprofit

#90

Post by chaseadam17 »

dmoney wrote: post #63
glimcat wrote: post #5

So, the really cool part is this: "At Watsi, 100% of your donations directly fund medical treatments. Watsi.org is separately funded. They pay all their operational costs from their own funding, and none from your donations. They even eat the credit card processing fees." This works great with Watsi's crowdfunding-style model. It probably wouldn't help with things which need legs on the ground full-time, but it would…

So, the really cool part is this: "At Watsi, 100% of your donations directly fund medical treatments. Watsi.org is separately funded. They pay all their operational costs from their own funding, and none from your donations. They even eat the credit card processing fees." It doesn't sound (as) cool me if the founders can only do this until they go broke. It looks like they do accept direct donations to fund their ope…

Very good point. We certainly don't want to go broke!

However, we feel very strongly that Watsi should be run like a successful startup, and not like a traditional non-profit.

Sustainability is extremely important to us. I'm a terrible fundraiser, and I want nothing more than for us to cover our own overhead.

However, it just doesn't make sense to implement revenue generating features (e.g. take a cut of donations, which to be clear we will never do) until we hit scale. Right now, we're entirely focused on improving our product, speaking with donors, and maximizing our impact.

However, just like any successful startup, there will (hopefully) come a time when the costs associated with scale begin to outstrip the seed-support we've so generously received from people like pg and Jessica. When that happens, we will implement features that generate revenue for our organization, and we'll have a user base large enough to make those features viable.

Without going into too much detail, those features will include things like asking donors for an optional "tip" to Watsi when giving to a patient (expected to net 6-8%), cause marketing products (already a few companies interested), white label, etc.

We will never abandon the 100% model, and I'm completely confident that for as long as there is demand for the service we're offering, we'll find a way to cover our overhead.

Post reply on HN