pratyushag

I don't see why it would... ebay would still hold a significant percentage of paypal and influence such decision making. The main benefit will come from large competitors choosing Paypal as it becomes a less biased payment service and not one that directly profits a competitor. Essentially, Ebay will now have to pay closer to market-rate for processing.

Great decision, allowing PayPal to grow beyond the virtual ceiling placed by being governed by a marketplace company which rightly has its own agenda before PayPal's.

It often takes leaving SV to understand what you're saying here.

I think YC has a lot to learn and will need to invest time before learning how to better pick nonprofits. There are a ton on foundations and competitions that look for nonprofits using technology to innovate the sector. The issue is that very few are measuring impact and asking the question: is this the best way to spend the dollars donated. Nonprofits owe it to their donors to maximize the impact per dollar but this is not something I have ever heard any YC nonprofit talk about yet.

It will be important to pick somebody who has significant experience in the nonprofit sector.

A few things that come to mind:

1. Giving cash to individuals or targeted groups in need is called cash transfers in the nonprofit sector. More specifically, conditional cash transfers or CCTs and governments spend more than $50 bn a year on this (depending on the definition, this can go up to $400bn a year!)

2. It would make sense for a lot of nonprofits to NOT EXIST in their current forms and instead be there to identify individuals and give them cash. If philanthropy was treated as a science with the objective of finding a method to maximize impact per dollar, there are good arguments to say that the null should be cash transfers for many cases. It's sad that that's not at all the case, especially for organizations funded by small private donors.

3. There are very few organizations/nonprofits/NGOs that do cash transfers in a way that you can reasonably know that almost all of your money is going to the poor: GiveDirectly and New Incentives.

GiveDirectly gives unconditional cash transfers (no strings attached) to people in need. New Incentives gives conditional cash transfers (based on fulfilling pre-defined health goals) to poor pregnant women with HIV.

4. The biggest issue with giving cash to the poor is to make sure that most of it goes to the poor instead of spending on either verifying these transfers, or transferring the cash to the beneficiaries. This may sound easy but since cash is so liquid, it has a tendency of getting "lost" with very little of it actually making it the beneficiary.

Very often people argue that poor people are poor because they don't know how to manage money and that they will do the same with the money you give them. Maybe they will, most likely they won't. They will likely use it in a way that benefits their life the most - to fulfill their greatest needs - which very often is food, shelter, and clothing. Still, if that's your only argument, than it should make sense to give to the very poor in developing countries who have likely not had the chance to escape the rigid cycle of poverty.

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If you think this article has merit beyond just being a great read, I would encourage you to donate to organizations doing cash transfers: www.newincentives.org www.givedirectly.com

The clause of being able to promote apps that are made by the same publisher will have a very significant impact on the industry and could even lead to more consolidation and a significant disadvantage for independent developers. In fact, I think this could lead to a business opportunity for publishing as a service whereby a developer can host their app with a partner and get paid based on the number of ads clicked, impressions, etc.

Overall, an unfriendly move for developers. I think it might be time to buy some Zynga ;-).

Companies might use wired internet but residential places without cable will likely move to mobile. This is exactly what is already happening in Nigeria.

Yep. Although they apologized publicly for it and came out being a much stronger organization.

Their apology (not half bad): http://www.givewell.org/about/shortcomings

Deceit in lending is not uncommon among microfinance organizations, but it's surprising to see it from a YC-backed company. I look forward to Zidisha's response, I'm sure they'll shed more light on it.

This makes YCombinator look bad. Did they know about this before investing in Zidisha? If not, maybe consulting the likes of GiveWell could be a good idea.

For some discussion about Zidisha vs GiveDirectly search "Zidisha" in the comments of these two articles: 1)http://blog.givewell.org/2012/04/26/microfinance-and-cooksto...

2)http://blog.givewell.org/2013/01/04/cash-transfers-vs-microl...

Would love to hear Kurnia's thoughts on this.

It's unfortunate that patent sharing is not covered by anti-competitive laws.

For people who care, I support New incentives - an organization that's actively trying to help constrain AIDS in Africa and that has managed to do it in a very cost effective and transparent way.

New Incentives is an organization that only gives money through CCTs and has seen exceptional results!! newincentives.org.

Do what you think represents you most. Depending on the size, creative resumes can really help. Smaller ones prefer more creative people that show an ability to be more versatile IMO. Good luck!

PDF is almost always the safest choice and make sure you include your LinkedIn account. That goes a long way.

I don't know how much credit the post deserves, but something to think about: A lot of very strong companies had already started capturing the smartphone market before Apple came out with the iPhone. I think it's clear that people care about marketing and branding and are obviously willing to pay for that (hint: car companies).

I couldn't find Kathmandu, Nepal on it. Thanks, pretty cool site!

Stop complaining and game the damn thing i you think it's that easy!