PG chooses healthcare non-profit Watsi as his first board seat

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/20/y-combinators-paul-graham-chooses-healthcare-non-profit-watsi-as-his-first-board-seat

by sethbannon • 13 years ago

129 31 13 years ago

thenextweb.com

dmix• 13 years ago

I had a random curiosity recently wondering if PG would ever reduce his responsibilities with YC. Or maybe take a break one semester.

It seems to be a very intensive thing to keep doing twice annually, year after year.

But it also must be very exciting and constantly motivating.

rdl2• 13 years ago

They get a month off twice a year (in between sessions), effectively, and outside of a few peak intensity periods (interviews, demo day, maybe applications), it seems dramatically lower stress than working at a startup.

jl• 13 years ago

It was low stress when there were 8 startups. With several hundred, it's a lot more work. PG says it's now pretty similar to Viaweb.

rattray2• 13 years ago

I wonder if this has to do with the fact that, since Watsi is a nonprofit, pg can still lay claim to the rather unique boast of not serving on any company boards. (This is as opposed to accepting the position simply because he thinks Watsi > other startups)

monkeyfacebag• 13 years ago

Non-profit organizations are still companies. They are required to retain their revenues rather than distribute them as profits. From Wikipedia: "Designation as a nonprofit and an intent to make money are not related in the United States." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization)

karamazov• 13 years ago

Most people can claim not to serve on any company boards.

rattray2• 13 years ago

My mistake; implicit was unique among the world of Startup luminaries and investors.

pcolton• 13 years ago

Saw Watsi's presentation at Demo Day. Watsi is pretty special.

coffeebite• 13 years ago

It is.

edouard1234567• 13 years ago

I really like how their operation cost is only covered by tips instead of a cut from donations like most other charitable organization. Not sure if they are first to do that.

I'd be curious to know what the average tip is.

When I give tips at the restaurant or the car wash, the more I give the better I feel about myself, it's not only a reward for the quality of the service but also the feeling of helping somebody who needs money more than I do. There's a little bit of charity in every tip, at least for me.

In this case the physiology is reversed. I'd rather donate more to the patient and less to the institution. I also have no reference of what a good tip is for Watsi. It would typically be the minimum amount to keep them operating and donate the rest to the patient.

Should they add a suggested tip?

sgpl• 13 years ago

Kiva does that [https://www.kiva.org].

Kiva is a lending platform focused on micro-finance. All the money you lend directly goes to the borrowers(via its lending partners), and once the lender returns the money, you can recycle the amount to another borrower on the website.

They do have suggested donations to Kiva, usually 10%/15%/20%/self-specify of the loan amount.

toomuchtodo• 13 years ago

15% is the default I believe.

larubbio• 13 years ago

Vittana works in a very similar way except they are focused exclusively on helping to fund education.

http://www.vittana.org/

makomk• 13 years ago

I'd be very surprised if Kiva don't have other ways of funding themselves - the microfinance institutions that make loans using Kiva money charge fairly substantial rates of interest on the loans, making it very profitable for those organisations at least.

Evbn3• 13 years ago

DonorsChoose and against malaria are similar. It is common, and a good angle.

DanBC• 13 years ago

Watsi is great.

I really hope this model gets extended by other people to cover things like community development.

EG "This village wants to build a wash block. They'll charge people to use it, so it'll be self-maintaining. The benefits of sanitation are clear, here's the evidence base. But they need $X to build it. Here are the costed plans so far."

Add some video commentary before, during, and after and I think it'd be pretty good.

mcintyre1994• 13 years ago

The issue is that Watsi commit to funding all projects themselves, so they'd need more and more donors in order to support bigger projects.

greenonion2• 13 years ago

Maybe this comment is off-topic here but I can't help but feel that Watsi is in a way making all these individuals "compete" in terms of who is more likable, or whose situation is the worst, in order for them to get the help they need. Maybe I'm exaggerating but this model really troubles me.

joezydeco• 13 years ago

How would you change the presentation to avoid this effect?

If candidates were presented one at a time, perhaps contributions wouldn't come in as effectively. If I see only one person in need and they're 60% funded, what gives me the sense of urgency that I should help as opposed to the momentum that this person already has?

Evbn3• 13 years ago

It is no worse than random selection. The blurbs are basically all the same fluff anyway.

tptacek• 13 years ago

The blurbs on Watsi are fluff? No they aren't. They're so much the opposite of fluff that if that's what you mean, I'm going to ahead and say you've never looked at the site. Each profile on Watsi lists the specific medical condition that an actual human being needs remediated. For instance, paraphrasing, "had half of body horribly burned in petrol fire".

chaseadam17• 13 years ago

Watsi guarantees funding for every patient profile that's accepted, so donor bias doesn't impact who receives care and who doesn't. (http://blog.watsi.org/post/43199420898/watsis-operational-pr...)

greenonion2• 13 years ago

Thank you for that link, I wasn't aware of that. Even though the reasoning behind their model is mostly logistics it is good to know that every person on Watsi will get his/her treatment regardless of when/if it gets funded.

I believe that information should be on a prominent spot on their website.

gbog2• 13 years ago

This made me think that often giving money is not the best way to help. Microcredit has been tried and don't fix everything. A development economist made a strong point showing that micro deposit was more likely to be helpful, for example incountries were it was not culturally acceptable to hold some tangible wealth when some neighbours are in need (in some parts of Kenya, people tend to eat all their corn once harvested as fast as possible to avoid having to give a part of it to... faster eaters).

Also, buying goods from peasants in poor countries is a more sustainable way to help. Just imagine an Amazon or a Taobao where you buy spices or coffee straight from the producer.

edit and move: In fact, a part of the pleasure of eating a good baguette is because you bought it to the boulangerie and met the guy who made it, or his wife. Same with cheese, or even more with wine (the summun of wine-snobism in to drink bottles that you got from the chateaux' cellar)

The Nescafe coffee I drink don't give me any pleasure of this kind, because I am not (or try not to be) emotionally affected by brands and commercials. But reversing the arrow: I would be fine and happy with buying my coffee grains from a Watsy-like website, choosing the guy and his family from a picture and short description (which is weak, but better than nothing). At least I would know who to curse if I found roaches in the bag (happened to me with industrial cereals).

Evbn3• 13 years ago

So you actively and intentionally promote inefficient production strategies, or want to be sold a fake image of pre-industrial cottage production that doesn't much exist, especially as prices you'd want to pay. That is not the way to lift people out of poverty.

Better to buy cheap cheese and then pay someone to make bread for his neighbors.

gbog2• 13 years ago

Sorry, but in France and in China, the two countries I have lived in, it is easy to buy relatively cheap food that is not produced "efficiently" from food industries.

Example:

- bread, cheese and wine in France. I mean the cheese, not the plastic yellow industrial thing that hijacked the name. You could visit a cheese-making farm, I bet you won't say it is "efficient".

- in Beijing, I buy my breakfast mantous (steamed buns) in a mantou place 30 meters away. I have seen the bags of wheat coming in the truck in the morning. They serve a block with very good mantous, but they are probably not as "efficient" as a couple of factories doing it for a 10M city.

But obviously, these way to produce food is in long term much more efficient than factories. Why? Because good food is good for health, and food cannot be good and at the same time produced "efficiently" by robots in factories.

soneca• 13 years ago

"For every complex problem there is a simple and wrong solution." Sorry, I don't know who I am quoting.

But I don't think we should be that skeptical. I guess that some markets may support this model with strong economic basis, not creating an artificial (and not sustainable) production and distribution system. Imagine markets where you don't pay for the production costs or even design, but for the brand. Maybe personalized clothes? My mother create skirts for my girlfriend and sisters that they prefer instead of brand skirts that cost $50. Poor people with a good marketplace could sell these personalized clothes.

Also, improving local economy is a very strong strategy. Social currencies (I don't know what is called in english, but I mean a currency that is only valid and accepted inside a particular community) may improve a lot local communities.

eli_gottlieb• 13 years ago

I dunno, the bakeries here in Haifa that bake their own bread, cakes, burekas, and other things seem pretty successful, actually. The product is certainly good enough that I prefer it over the supermarket bakery, and the prices are competitive.

ta20• 13 years ago

Pain and hunger are the two main sensations that can cripple a person, preventing them from "competing" in the real world. I'm glad Watsi's tackling one of them. In my country, doctors are often equated to God, and Watsi should be commended for serving the same role.

That said, I'd love to see YC fund a company that can create more fundamental and lasting impact. Kalibrr, also from YC W13, somewhat falls into this category, even though it's positioned at a decently developed economic rung of society.

I'd love to see YC fund a company with a scalable model that can uplift a society and affect significant lasting change (doesn't matter if the company is non-profit or not). I guess this would require YC to fund more companies that're based out of developing countries and that have innovative business models. I'd like to think there's a lot of economic gain to be made in the process too.

PG chooses healthcare non-profit Watsi as his first board seat

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