2016
Annual Report

November 28, 2016

Like most companies, we could represent 2016 with shiny numbers, like our donation growth and the number of patients we’ve funded.

But you can see those on our transparency document any time. And they portray a linear trendline of progress that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Instead, we’d like to share these numbers that more transparently represent our 2016:

Credit Card Fraud

$54,242

In donations manually refunded due to credit card fraud
Growth Experiments

$1,533

Raised for patients from six weeks of work on viral product campaigns
Patient Supply

4 times

That we ran out of fundable patients on the website
Inefficient Operations

697 days

Longest time from a patient being posted to an update being sent to donors
Hospital Fraud

64 patients

Affected by a hospital staff member requesting bribes

We’re sharing these numbers because, if we’re being transparent, our progress toward making healthcare possible for everyone doesn’t come from glamorous strokes of inspiration or bulletproof plans for success.

Our progress comes from problems that push us forward.

While some of our problems are familiar to any startup, many are unique to global health.

For example, what do we do about people using our website to test stolen credit cards? Is product or marketing ultimately going to drive our donation growth? What tools do we build when we outgrow lightweight project management software? How do we balance supply and demand when our “supply” is people who need healthcare? How do we verify that Watsi patients aren’t being asked to pay extra for healthcare?

Solving these problems was messy, and we didn’t always get it right on the first try, but we never let perfection be the enemy of progress.


Here are the numbers that more accurately represent the progress we made in 2016:

Credit Card Fraud

$40M

In fraudulent donations automatically caught by new machine learning tools
Growth Experiments

$320,140

Raised for patients in only 7 days from our 10x marketing campaign
Patient Supply

6 months

Amount of time we can now project and balance patient submissions with donations
Inefficient Operations

20 hours

Approx. time saved each week with our new profile editing system
Hospital Fraud

1,885 patients

Screened for improper hospital staff behavior using our new anomaly detection tools

These aren’t the shiniest metrics, but they’re the realest ones. And looking back on 2016, it’s the time we spent solving problems like these that made Watsi’s platform strong enough to transparently deploy millions of dollars in healthcare for patients.

This holiday season, we hope you’ll support our journey toward making healthcare a reality for everyone.

Support a patient
100% of your donation funds healthcare, and as always, we are committed to radical transparency.