New Story
Brett Hagler was 20 when he traveled to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. What he saw—kids living in life-threatening tent slums—broke something in him. He wanted to help, but when he looked for a charity to champion, he kept hitting the same wall: traditional charities felt like black holes. He never knew where his money went, what percentage actually reached people in need, or who he was actually helping. The entrepreneur in him rebelled. "There's got to be a better way," he thought.
Brett didn't start a traditional nonprofit. He and his co-founding team (most with zero nonprofit background) built a tech product instead: a digital crowdfunding platform that turned charity inside out. The model was simple but radical: 100% of public donations go directly to the exact people donors see on the platform. Overhead and operations are funded separately by "investor donors"—essentially angel investors who believe in the mission and fund the team's growth, expecting no financial return, only social ROI. Each home costs $6,000 to build.
The platform's transparency became its superpower. Instead of a black hole, donors got something they'd never had before: a personal connection. See a family's profile, understand their story, know exactly where your $6,000 goes. Y Combinator noticed and backed them. So did a growing circle of philanthropist "builders"—wealthy individuals and VCs who liked the model: give $25,000 to operations, and watch that capital leverage 10x the impact through better product design and engineering.
In just 17 months from idea to launch, New Story generated over $3 million in donation revenue. They'd built 4 complete communities with over 300 homes, each community including not just housing but schools, clean water systems, and business training. The 6-person team, based in San Francisco, is obsessed with winning—measured not in bank account growth but in lives impacted. Brett's 10-year vision: 1,000 communities around the world. At 26, he's rejected the status quo path his peers took (accounting degrees, Big Four jobs) and is betting that transparency, great product design, and competitive excellence can reinvent how the world does charity.
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