Chase Adam
The Peace Corps Volunteer who built “a Kiva for health care.”
I have the pleasure of introducing you to a social entrepreneur named Chase who is doing amazing things and having a huge impact on people all around the world. Chase is the founder of Watsi.org, an amazing website that he calls “a Kiva for health care.”
I had the pleasure of talking with Chase a few years before he was featured in the New York Times and Rolling Stone. We talked about the story that started Watsi, serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica, being the first nonprofit ever funded by Y Combinator, and why he decided to make every dollar Watsi spends public. You can hear our whole conversation and read the transcript in my interview with Chase.
Great quotes from Chase
- On the day Watsi began, December 3, 2010, on a bus home from San JoséA woman got on the bus and started asking the passengers for donations. Almost everyone on the bus contributed… it turned out that she actually was holding her son’s medical record and she’d been raising money from the people on the bus to pay for his medical treatment.
- The only way I was going to start a non-profit is if we built a non-profit that I personally would feel comfortable giving to.
- If I was a donor, what type of organization would I want to support?
- I felt like a lot of organizations say they’re transparent, but not a lot are truly transparent.
- I think what we’re finding is that we can trust the general public just like we would trust our team.
- People don’t think that posting on Facebook or sharing on Twitter matters, but it actually has a huge impact.
Chase at Y Combinator’s Startup School
Quotes from our Everyday Humanitarians interview, 2013. Video: Y Combinator’s official recording of Startup School 2013.
My interview with Chase
Here’s the full video of our Everyday Humanitarians interview on the startup success of Watsi.
Read more
- My interview with Chaseaudio + transcript
- Watsiwatsi.org
- Chase at Startup School 2013YouTube
- WatsiWikipedia
366 meditations on gratitude, kindness, and the people who inspire us — one true story or quote a day. Many of the people on this shelf will be in it.
Read a sample & get notified →