Earlier this year, American seed accelerator Y Combinator included a nonprofit in its Winter 2013 class. Co-founder Paul Graham writes that they’ve been thinking about including nonprofits in the program.
After meeting with the founders of Watsi, they felt that the nonprofit was the best candidate to start with. Watsi is a crowdfunding platform for healthcare that has received funding from a range of investors – entrepreneurs, angels, and social investment funds. Graham says, “I’ve never been so excited about anything we’ve funded.”
Y Combinator has just opened applications for the upcoming winter class and for the first time, they’ve included an application form for nonprofits. Graham says that they’re going to start including nonprofits in every batch.
Rather than an investment, the money put into the nonprofits will be a charitable donation. Y Combinator won’t have any financial interest in them.
What kind of nonprofits will they be looking for? Frankly, Graham doesn’t know. It’s all an experiment. But he does mention that they like Watsi “because they help people who really need help, and do it in an efficient and transparent way.”