Conference Presentation, Fireside Chat
Chase Adam at Startup School 2013
- WOTC (Watsi) is a nonprofit crowdfunding platform described as "Kickstarter for healthcare," allowing global donors to fund low-cost, high-impact medical care for patients in developing nations.
- The organization was the first nonprofit accepted into Y Combinator, an event the speaker cites as a critical "stamp of approval" that facilitated subsequent fundraising in a risk-averse philanthropy sector.
- Founder Chase was inspired to create WOTC after observing a patient's mother in Central America successfully crowdfund her son's surgery by sharing medical records on a bus, contrasting this with the lack of similar infrastructure for healthcare.
- The initial launch occurred on August 23, 2012, with zero revenue and no full-time staff, yet the site went viral via Hacker News within hours, directing 16,000 unique visitors and immediately funding all pre-existing patient requests.
- A "trough of sorrow" ensued post-launch when the platform ran out of patients to fund, revealing a lack of operational infrastructure and forcing the founder to quit his finance job to attempt fundraising.
- Initial fundraising efforts failed for three months until a direct email from Paul Graham led to WOTC's acceptance into Y Combinator; Graham's team wrote the first check within an hour of the meeting.
- WOTC made five foundational strategic decisions early on:
- Implementing radical transparency by posting screenshots of all financial transfers.
- Adopting a 100% model where every donation dollar goes directly to medical care with no operational cuts.
- Enforcing minimal fundraising to avoid operational distraction.
- Establishing a circular organizational structure with no hierarchy or founder titles to maintain a "perpetual state of being founded."
- Committing to the Golden Rule: treating donors and patients exactly as the team would want to be treated in their specific situations.
- During Y Combinator, the team focused on a single metric—weekly donations—achieving a 30% week-over-week growth rate for three months.
- Early fundraising was ineffective because the organization attempted to sell "emotion" and complex "impact models" rather than a clear vision; success arrived only when the pitch shifted to the simple vision that "if we make the world smaller, we make the world better."
- The second fundraising campaign resulted in 138 meetings across five states, yielding 36 checks over $1,000, 13 checks over $25,000, and a total raise of $1.2 million (averaging $8,800 per meeting).
- Current operational challenges include a surge in credit card fraud from Jamaican attackers testing stolen numbers, a lawsuit threat from a billion-dollar healthcare company regarding trademark infringement, and an inability to automate processing as patient intake outpaces the small team.
- The organization now holds an 18-month runway and occupies office space provided by Teespring in San Francisco.
- The speaker asserts that WOTC "cannot fail" because its success is defined by the binary metric of funding "one more patient," regardless of the organization's long-term financial trajectory.