Hacker News Reader

Comment by skizm | Hacker News Reader

No one invests in a non-profit. Investors want ROI and going to mars is pretty capital intensive.

EDIT: correct me if I am wrong, but YC doesn't expect to make a RIO with Watsi. They just want to make the world a better place. It is a donation not an investment. Most VCs are not that nice.

EDIT: EDIT: Found it: "Since some people were confused when we funded Watsi, I'd better clarify that the money we're putting into the nonprofits will be a charitable donation, rather than an investment in the narrow sense. We won't have any financial interest in them." Link here: http://ycombinator.com/np.html

View on HN

Watsi is the first non-profit Y Combinator is backing.

http://ycombinator.com/watsi.html

Disclaimer: HUGE Watsi fan.

Let me introduce you to people who want more than ROI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_investing

There are a variety of ways you could structure things. A non-profit could take loans or sell bonds. I've heard talk of a pay-for-success model for public-good bonds. [1] The non-profit could create a for-profit subsidiary, like Mozilla does. A non-profit could enter into a joint venture (e.g., with an aerospace company).

I think the main barrier to approaches like this is attitudes like yours: for-profit people often have a hard time of steering by the public good. And, of course, the mirror attitude, where non-profit people are suspicious of anything that looks like capitalism. But there's no necessary conflict; the whole theory of capitalism is that companies are making the world better. And if you want to make the world better, the best way to do that is sustainably, and for-profit companies have done a lot of great thinking on how to stay in the black.

[1] http://nonprofitfinancefund.org/pay-for-success

I disagree. We have had a bunch of significant investments in Akvo and we are non-profit. The investments aren't structured for maximum financial ROI, but maximum societal ROI. Nevertheless they are investments.

http://Akvo.org/

> No one invests in a non-profit.

I thought that was called a donation.

Y Combinator invests in non-profits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com