Watsi is without a doubt the best thing to come out of YC.
Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
31–40 of 118 posts
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#32I have been a Universal Fund member since 2014.
Watsi has this Impact page where you can see every person you've helped — their photo, their story, the country. I visit it more often than I'd like to admit.
I have been building a startup since the last couple of years and as we all know it is relentless. There are weeks where nothing seems to work, where you question every decision. In those moments, pulling up that page and seeing real people whose lives changed because of a few dollars a month — it resets something. It reminds me why building things that matter is worth the grind.
Thank you to everyone at Watsi for creating something that gives back to donors just as much as it gives to patients.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#33Thank YOU Chase :) (I work at Watsi) If you'd like to see an example of what Watsi's about, check out Philip's profile: https://watsi.org/profile/2286cb03a5bd-philip Also, fun fact: 619 of our current "Universal Fund" monthly donors first made a donation 10 or more years ago, and I'm pretty sure many of those were/are Hacker News readers. If you're interested, see https://watsi.org/universal-fund
I've long played around with the thought of what would happen if someone started something like the universal-fund you mentioned, but had it snowball like a sovereign fund? (ie, instead of spending the in flow, invest it and only spend the profits from the investments, for example) ...
Particularly for basic needs like housing,food,clothes... Like what if instead of giving a charity $100 we created 41c per month? of UBI (roughly the cashflow from investing that same $100). Yes it would seem too little today, but in time it would be massive because it would never dissipate.
IDK, just my musing while claude takes, err does, my job.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#34Watsi seems to be doing great work, but the title—"you helped save 33k lives"—reads as misleading to me. I guess "helped" could be doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but I would be incredibly surprised if the counterfactual number of lives saved was more than 3000. (But don't let this dissuade you from donating; concretely improving someone's life is totally a worthwhile goal, and Watsi seems very good at effecting t…
You must be fun at parties ;-)
Lol, I just care a lot about saving as many lives as I can; the most effective charities I've been able to find good evidence on save one life for $6–8k. If Watsi had a credible claim at being able to save lives 10x cheaper I would redirect my entire donation budget to them!
That said, once again, Watsi is great. I really appreciate all the hard work they've put into making this happen—this is orders of magnitude more impressive and impactful than most projects I've ever seen!
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#35Watsi seems to be doing great work, but the title—"you helped save 33k lives"—reads as misleading to me. I guess "helped" could be doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but I would be incredibly surprised if the counterfactual number of lives saved was more than 3000. (But don't let this dissuade you from donating; concretely improving someone's life is totally a worthwhile goal, and Watsi seems very good at effecting t…
"Counterfactual number of lives saved" is not the normal sense of the phrase "save a life". By that logic, each person's life can only be saved once, which is not how people normally use the phrase.
Your definition may be useful for cold hard utilitarian calculus, of the sort that hospital directors need to do if they've run out of fundraising opportunities. However, "effective altruism" – which I suspect you're alluding to here – isn't actually an efficient way to save lives, the way it's usually practised (ignoring second-order effects, and everything that doesn't fit on a spreadsheet).
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#36Watsi seems to be doing great work, but the title—"you helped save 33k lives"—reads as misleading to me. I guess "helped" could be doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but I would be incredibly surprised if the counterfactual number of lives saved was more than 3000. (But don't let this dissuade you from donating; concretely improving someone's life is totally a worthwhile goal, and Watsi seems very good at effecting t…
"Counterfactual number of lives saved" is not the normal sense of the phrase "save a life". By that logic, each person's life can only be saved once, which is not how people normally use the phrase. Your definition may be useful for cold hard utilitarian calculus, of the sort that hospital directors need to do if they've run out of fundraising opportunities. However, "effective altruism" – which I suspect you're allu…
You're right; I should've been more precise. However, we have tools for dealing with this—that's what quality-adjusted life-years are for! I don't contest that surgeries often significantly increase QALYs, and may do so pretty cost-effectively.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#37I have been a Universal Fund member since 2014. Watsi has this Impact page where you can see every person you've helped — their photo, their story, the country. I visit it more often than I'd like to admit. I have been building a startup since the last couple of years and as we all know it is relentless. There are weeks where nothing seems to work, where you question every decision. In those moments, pulling up that…
Thank you aaur0 - you have no idea how much this means to us. Grateful for every ounce of good news and good health we can spread in this world.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#38That's incredible. Why even compare your startup to for-profits, while you actually make world a better place?
Why would for profits not make the world a better place? For-profit does not mean “shareholders and ROI over user” or something. You can do for-profit and not enshtfy and make the world better. That’s my goal at least.
If profit is the objective, it will turn into growth-at-all-costs machine because that's how the mathematics works.
If, however, the objective is, say, improve as many lives as possible with the constraint of being profitable, it's definitely possible to do good. You just have to make sure you understand what level of profitability is sufficient, which is rare but doable.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#39Thank YOU Chase :) (I work at Watsi) If you'd like to see an example of what Watsi's about, check out Philip's profile: https://watsi.org/profile/2286cb03a5bd-philip Also, fun fact: 619 of our current "Universal Fund" monthly donors first made a donation 10 or more years ago, and I'm pretty sure many of those were/are Hacker News readers. If you're interested, see https://watsi.org/universal-fund
I've long played around with the thought of what would happen if someone started something like the universal-fund you mentioned, but had it snowball like a sovereign fund? (ie, instead of spending the in flow, invest it and only spend the profits from the investments, for example) ... Particularly for basic needs like housing,food,clothes... Like what if instead of giving a charity $100 we created 41c per month? of…
Plenty of those have existed, but in the end they always get stolen and given to the dogs trust.
There’s nothing people hate more than lasting charitable foundations. They take them to court so that they can crack them open and wank away the entire fund in 6 months.
There was one which was supposed to pay off the entire national debt. They cracked and spaffed it.
Another was supposed to end piracy. Cracked and spaffed.
You could save a million people a year, but that won’t save you from being cracked and spaffed. They’re already rubbing their trotters at the thought.
Re: Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
#40I made the biggest donations in my life via Watsi. Thank you for building this site. I love you guys have an API as well. I thought of building an app on top of your API but never got round to complete it. If you are curious, I can share; I think there may be an opportunity to capture value in free giveaways and turn it into charity. Many people try to give away their things quickly on fb marketplace or letgo, ...what if they could ask for a donation to a charity? I know there are challenges like, what if they want to return. But there has to be a way to solve this with an escrow service or something. A similar model already works in used, 2nd stores that work for charities.