Visionary of the Year Award Winner Discusses Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship with Guyette Leadership Fellows

 Adam told the students about his start-up company, Watsi, which provides a platform for anyone to directly fund life-changing healthcare for people around the world. So far, more than 20,000 donors have funded essential healthcare for nearly 10,000 patients across the globe.

Guyette Professor of Responsible Leadership Nancy Lam arranged the meeting to offer students an opportunity to learn from an entrepreneur who was using his leadership skills to positively change the world. Students in attendance included undergraduates Shubhi Badjatiya, Sierra Nguyen, Bridget Lanigan, Michael Maynard, Rachel Rowland, and Antonio Costa.

Adam grew up in Marin, attending school at UC Santa Barbara. Shortly after, he went abroad, visiting 20 countries before he turned 21, including Chile and Barbados. “I moved to DC to work in a private intelligence firm. I didn't feel like we were making the world a better place, so I asked ‘What's the opposite of this,’” said Adam.

Adam was primarily interested in the intersection of non-profits, social good, and business. He moved to Haiti to work, soon joining the Peace Corp in order to continue working in micro-finance. While serving in the Peace Corps in Central America, a woman boarded a bus Chase was on and asked for donations to pay for her son's healthcare. This event inspired him to start Watsi, which he named after the town he was traveling through at the time. While still working during the day in the finance industry, he started building his business at night, with the idea of connecting people needing medical services with healthcare through crowdfunding.

Adam described Watsi mainly as a technology platform. “We launched August 23, 2012. We didn't have any funding, marketing, or PR strategy. We had a ‘coming soon’ page,” said Adam.  Delving into detail about the basic steps he took to launch his first startup, he shared how they were able to get their initial investment funding.  Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, the first tech incubator which invested in Reddit, Dropbox, and Airbnb, and also coded Hacker News had never funded a nonprofit. But Adam posted information about his business on Hacker News, and Graham  wanted to meet him.

“It was the opposite of our conversation with foundations. We are mostly engineers and data scientists. We face all of the same challenges as a good start-up. We went through the Y Combinator program. We went out to venture capitalists and angel investors, raised about a million, went from 3 to 15 employees, counting part-time. We've processed more than 7 million dollars for 10,000 patients in 24 countries.”

Adam talked openly about plans for the future of Watsi, including strengths and weaknesses. “Privacy is viewed differently in other countries than in the US. It's not the most important thing for patients. We want to be the gold standard in other countries for privacy. “

Watsi also wants to build an infrastructure every country can potentially use, by gathering accurate data in order to help reduce waste and fraud in the healthcare industry. “The amount of room for optimization in healthcare is huge,” said Adam. “The World Health Organization’s (WHO) goal for 2030 is universal healthcare. WHO is saying the only way is by doubling spending. Somehow the poorest half of the world need to get twice as rich in the next 15 years. What is possible is to fund healthcare twice as efficiently. Reducing fraud and waste by at least 25 percent will make it possible to achieve this.”

A few of the students took turns asking questions towards the end of the lunch. Badjatiya asked how Watsi is able to corroborate what they paid for and what kinds of treatments patients receive, particularly with surgery. Adam told her that Watsi has a number of audits in place, “Between all those data points, it would be difficult to forge all those checks for fraud.”

Adam shared that Watsi is currently launching an experimental model, a universal healthcare program in a village in Uganda. The program will provide full coverage to everyone in the village.

 “We look at current out of pocket payments. Data says out of pocket is a bad way to fund healthcare. A lot of countries and hospitals do it. The reason is that people delay seeking healthcare. Then cost increases. You want to incentivize patients to get healthcare as early as possible. You want to pool risk. With our model, we pay the premium. Then eventually we want the Uganda government to pay the premium,” said Adam.

Lam drew the discussion to a close by asking what Adam’ most spectacular failures were. “We've had a lot of failures,” said Adam. Watsi was the first time he had no boss. He decided in the initial stages of Watsi to have no bosses, with self-management and no hierarchy. “The minute we got to ten people that all broke,” laughed Adam. “At that point I had to organize. I felt like everyone told me I was being an idiot. Management structures exist for a reason.”

He suggested to the fellows that they take the advice that helped him the most. “Paul Graham told me to pick one area to innovate. Revolutionize one aspect of your business, but not all of it.” For us, it's tech products. For all other things, he said, just do the normal things—branding, management, office—be a normal 501C.”

Adam was one of several leaders who will meet the Guyette Leadership Fellows over the coming months.

Launched in 2014 to develop the next generation of business leaders for a changing world, the Leadership Fellows program helps select groups of exceptional SMC undergraduate students—across a variety of disciplines—enhance their leadership skills and capabilities. The program was made possible through a generous gift from Jim Guyette—former president and CEO of Rolls Royce North American, a 1967 alumnus of Saint Mary's,  and a member of the College's Board of Regents—and his wife, Kay, a strong SMC supporter and a philanthropist to several nonprofit and charitable organizations.