Chase Adam at Startup School 2013

Adam describes Watsi as a platform where people can donate to fund medical care, such as heart surgery or a prosthetic arm. The idea came to him on a bus in Central America, where a mother raised money for her son’s treatment by showing passengers his medical records. Adam saw that trust and clear information could make crowdfunding for health care possible.

Adam says nonprofits can struggle to tell whether they are helping because the people receiving services may be hard to reach and may hesitate to give critical feedback. He recalls how donated rice in Haiti undercut local farmers, illustrating how aid can help in the short term while causing harm later. Watsi’s early team chose radical transparency, a 100% donation model for medical care, minimal fundraising, a circular structure without bosses, and patient- and donor-centered decisions.

After more than a year of volunteer work, Watsi launched on August 23, 2012, but initially received few donations. A Hacker News post then brought 16,000 visitors and funded every patient in Watsi’s pipeline, though the team was unprepared for the attention and soon faced a fundraising shortfall. Paul Graham later met with the team and wrote its first check, and Adam says Y Combinator helped provide focus, a network, and credibility.

Adam struggled when he tried to raise money by selling emotion or projected impact, which he felt he could not honestly substantiate. He realized Watsi was offering a vision of a smaller, more connected world. The team held 138 meetings across five states in three months, raised $1.2 million, and received checks from 36 people of more than $1,000.

Adam describes Watsi’s mixed position: it had 18 months of runway, a growing team, and donated office space, while also facing credit card fraud, a trademark threat, and overloaded manual operations. He closes by urging people to work on something they care about more than themselves. For Watsi, he says, progress means funding one more patient.