3D Home Printing for the Developing World – Alexandria Lafci and Brett Hagler of New Story Charity

TL;DR

New Story is a nonprofit that builds homes and communities in Haiti and Latin America, initially using a crowdfunding model with 100% of donations going to families and move‑in videos as accountability. They were the first nonprofit through Y Combinator, where they learned to set audacious goals (e.g., 100 homes in 100 days) and reverse‑engineer execution.

Key insights

• The founders built a fake crowdfunding platform using Webflow (a YC company) as an MVP, manually updating donation meters on a static page, proving “make something people want” without building real s
• They set a 12‑month goal of 100 homes and, after a YC partner challenged them, achieved it in 92 days by reverse‑engineering the plan.
• Their first post‑YC hire was an impact data manager, not marketing, because number of homes is a vanity metric; they measure changes in residents’ sleep (4→8 hours), school attendance, and entrepreneu