Key takeaways
- Watsi saved 33,000 lives through healthcare crowdfunding since its inception in 2013.
- The organization was Y Combinator's first nonprofit startup, recognized by Paul Graham.
- Watsi has raised over $20 million to fund surgeries for patients in need.
- The founder faced challenges typical of nonprofits, including fundraising and market fit.
- Support from Hacker News was crucial to Watsi's early success and growth.
Chase Adam, the co-founder of the U.S.-based nonprofit organisation and healthcare crowdfunding platform Watsi, wrote on HackerNews, the technology and startups forum, crediting its members for the success of his initiative.
“You helped save 33k lives,” said Adam, recalling how he launched Watsi 13 years ago as a ‘Show HN’ post — a tag used by the community to showcase their projects and work.
The post was then seen by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, and Watsi was accepted into the startup school as its first nonprofit.
“I'm incredibly proud of what the org has accomplished and grateful to everyone who has done a tour of duty to support us. Watsi donors have donated over $20M to fund 33,241 surgeries, and we have a good shot of helping patients for a long time to come,” said Adam.
He also recalled how, after the early surge of support from Hacker News and acceptance into Y Combinator, the organisation faced structural constraints typical of nonprofits.
“I was a young, naive founder with just enough experience to know I wanted Watsi to be more efficient, transparent, and innovative than most nonprofits,” he wrote in the post. He said they struggled to find product-market fit, as he felt fewer people would be as excited about donating on a website as they are about other activities on other apps.
“No matter how much effort we put into fundraising, donations grew linearly, while requests for care grew exponentially,” said Adam.
“This was exacerbated by seeing our for-profit YC batch mates raise massive rounds. I felt like a failure for not scaling Watsi faster, but eventually we accepted reality and set Watsi on more of a slow, steady, and sustainable trajectory.”
Another employee from Watsi also shared a comment on the post, and stated that “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.”
