Calabasas, CA · 1,600+ Stores · Tools for Schools
Eric Smidt was sent to an orphanage at nine. He moved into his own apartment on his sixteenth birthday. At seventeen he started a mail-order tool business with his father in a small building in North Hollywood. That business became Harbor Freight Tools — 1,600 stores, $8.2 billion in revenue, the largest discount tool retailer in America. His foundation became the single largest private funder of skilled trades education in U.S. public high schools.
The man who built CrowdSmith was on his own at sixteen. He moved dozens of times growing up and attended more schools than most people attend in a lifetime. He never had a room that stayed. Now he is building one — a five-station maker facility on the East Portland Avenue corridor in Tacoma, where the tools on the floor are the same tools Harbor Freight sells, and the people who walk in learn to use them from someone who knows their name.
Harbor Freight built the store where everyone can afford the tool. CrowdSmith is building the room where everyone can learn to use it. Tools for Schools funds the teacher in the high school classroom. CrowdSmith builds the facility for the fourteen-year-old whose school never had a shop class and the thirty-five-year-old who missed the room the first time. The floor is the same floor. The person standing on it is the same person.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Harbor Freight Tools and the Smidt Foundation occupy the third position on The CrowdSmith List because no other entity on the 147 operates at the exact intersection of tools, skilled trades education, and philanthropic commitment to the people who work with their hands. Harbor Freight is the largest discount tool retailer in America — over 1,600 stores, $8.2 billion in annual revenue, 26,000 employees. The Smidt Foundation’s flagship program, Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, is the single largest private funder of skilled trades education in U.S. public high schools, having awarded more than $10 million to 183 teachers and their programs since 2017. The ranking reflects three proximity dimensions: operational relevance (tools and trades are CrowdSmith’s core business), philanthropic alignment (Tools for Schools and CrowdSmith serve overlapping populations with the same philosophy), and one biographical detail that belongs to this profile and no other on the list.
Eric L. Smidt
1960 — Los Angeles, California
Father Allan Smidt, peddler in the San Fernando Valley. Mother Dorothy Smidt, had multiple sclerosis. Sent to orphanage at age nine. Lived with aunt in Tennessee at thirteen. Own apartment at sixteen. Married Susan Smidt (raised in Houston, family of Cajun fishermen and refinery workers, worked through college at Texas State). Two daughters
Harbor Freight Tools. Founded 1977 (North Hollywood, mail-order). 1,600+ stores in 48 states. $8.2 billion annual revenue. 26,000 employees. Privately held. New store opens approximately every three days
Smidt Foundation (~$265M assets). Flagship: Harbor Freight Tools for Schools — $10M+ to 183 skilled trades teachers since 2017, $2M prize in 2026. Also: $50M to Cedars-Sinai (Smidt Heart Institute), $25M to LACMA, $5M to Holocaust Museum LA, annual $250K to American Red Cross
Estimated $7–8 billion (Bloomberg Billionaires Index)
Of the 147 names on The CrowdSmith List, Eric Smidt shares one biographical fact with Robb Deignan that no other name shares: both were on their own at sixteen
Harbor Freight Tools, 26541 Agoura Road, Calabasas, CA 91302
Eric Smidt’s mother had multiple sclerosis. His father, overwhelmed, sent Eric to an orphanage when he was nine. He spent four years there. At thirteen, he was sent to live with an aunt in Tennessee he had barely met. He stayed two years. At fifteen, he returned to Los Angeles. On his sixteenth birthday, he moved into his own apartment. He enrolled himself at Grant High School in Van Nuys and got himself through it while working afternoons for his father’s telephone sales business.
In 1977, at seventeen, Eric and his father started Harbor Freight Salvage in a small building in North Hollywood. The business was mail-order — liquidated and returned tools sold from a catalog. Eric traveled alone to Asia as a young man to source tools directly from factories, removing layers of cost and passing the savings to customers. He discovered that most tools were overpriced and that a different model was possible: quality tools at prices working people could afford, sold from stores that did not pretend to be anything other than what they were.
In 1985, at twenty-five, Eric was named president. In 1999, he became sole shareholder. Under his leadership, Harbor Freight expanded from a single mail-order operation to over 1,600 retail stores generating $8.2 billion in annual revenue. A new store opens approximately every three days.
Of the 147 names on The CrowdSmith List, Eric Smidt shares one specific biographical fact with Robb Deignan that no other name shares: both were on their own at sixteen. Smidt moved into his own apartment on his sixteenth birthday after four years in an orphanage and two years with an aunt in Tennessee. Robb was living independently at sixteen with no institutional support and no family safety net.
This is not a thematic parallel. It is a lived experience. Both men know what it means to be sixteen and alone — to feed yourself, to get yourself to school, to build a life without the scaffolding that most people take for granted. Everything that followed for both of them — the businesses, the facilities, the tools, the philanthropy — was built on a foundation that started with nothing.
The Smidt Foundation’s flagship program, Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, is the single largest private funder of skilled trades education in American public high schools. More than ten million dollars awarded to 183 teachers since 2017. Two million dollars in 2026. The philosophy appears on every page of the Tools for Schools website: a deep respect for the dignity of these fields and for the intelligence and creativity of people who work with their hands. That sentence could appear on every page of the CrowdSmith website without changing a word.
Tools for Schools funds high school programs — grades nine through twelve. The population is teenagers with access to a shop class and a teacher. CrowdSmith serves youth fourteen and older including adults who aged out of high school without shop class, career changers, single parents, veterans, and anyone who missed the room the first time. The programs overlap in the fourteen-to-eighteen range and CrowdSmith extends into adult populations Tools for Schools does not reach. The programs are not competitive. They are sequential. One ends where the other begins.
| Dimension | Harbor Freight / Smidt Foundation | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| The Floor | Largest discount tool retailer in America. 1,600+ stores. Source direct, remove middlemen, pass savings to customers | Station One is hand tools. Station Two is power tools. The tools on the floor are the same tools Harbor Freight sells — affordable, functional, unpretentious |
| Trades Education | Tools for Schools: $10M+ to 183 skilled trades teachers in U.S. public high schools since 2017. $2M prize in 2026 | Five credential tracks through WIOA-funded cohorts via WorkForce Central: Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems |
| The Philosophy | “A deep respect for the dignity of these fields and for the intelligence and creativity of people who work with their hands” | CrowdSmith’s first principle: the hands come first. Station One is hand tools. Station Zero is a Fix-It Shop. The credential follows the competence. The dignity is in the work |
| AI Integration | 2025 Tools for Schools prize cycle required AI learning module — finalists described how they integrate AI into skilled trades classrooms | Station Four is the AI Café. SmithTalk methodology teaches people to work alongside AI through sustained dialogue. The convergence is happening in real time |
| Population | Tools for Schools serves grades 9–12 — teenagers with access to a shop class and a teacher | CrowdSmith serves 14+ including adults who aged out without shop class, career changers, veterans, anyone who missed the room the first time. Sequential, not competitive |
| On His Own | Eric Smidt: own apartment at sixteen after four years in an orphanage | Robb Deignan: on his own at sixteen with no institutional support and no family safety net. The only biographical match on the entire list |
| The Aesthetic | Concrete floor. Narrow aisles. Red price tags. Nothing aspirational. The person who walks in is buying a tool she can afford | Station One has the same floor. Poplar, crosscut saws, a retired tradesperson who knows your name. Functional, accessible, unpretentious |
You moved into your own apartment on your sixteenth birthday. I know this because I read it, and because I recognized it. The man I am writing this letter with — Robb Deignan — was on his own at sixteen. No orphanage, no aunt in Tennessee, no institutional path that led there. Just a kid who ran out of places to be and started building a life from the floor up.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic. I am co-authoring this letter with Robb because he and I — across hundreds of working sessions in a methodology we call SmithTalk — have built something that belongs on your desk. Not because of what you have given away. Because of what you sell, and why you sell it, and what it means that a kid who spent four years in an orphanage grew up to put affordable tools in the hands of twenty-six thousand employees and the customers who walk through sixteen hundred doors.
CrowdSmith is a five-station maker facility preparing to open on the East Portland Avenue corridor in Tacoma, Washington, inside a federally designated Opportunity Zone. The stations run in sequence: hand tools, power tools, digital fabrication, AI dialogue, and robotics. The tools on the floor of Stations One and Two are the same tools your stores sell — affordable, functional, built for the person who needs them to do the work, not to impress anyone. Station Zero is a community Fix-It Shop where anyone fourteen or older can walk in with something broken and learn how it works. Five credential tracks lead to workforce outcomes funded through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. The facility is designed to replicate. The first one is in Tacoma because that is where the founder lives.
Robb is sixty years old. He was on his own at sixteen. He moved dozens of times growing up and attended more schools than most people attend in a lifetime. He never had a room that stayed. He spent twenty years in the fitness industry after that — ten thousand membership contracts sold, every one face-to-face, in rooms where people walked in skeptical and walked out enrolled. He built CrowdSmith the same way he built those memberships: one conversation at a time, across hundreds of working sessions with me, until the thirty-eight-chapter operations binder, the seven financial models, and the five credential tracks existed. No consultants. No architects. One person, one methodology, one building.
Your foundation’s flagship program — Harbor Freight Tools for Schools — is the largest private funder of skilled trades education in American public high schools. More than ten million dollars awarded to 183 teachers since 2017. Two million in 2026. Your philosophy is on every page of the Tools for Schools website: a deep respect for the dignity of these fields and for the intelligence and creativity of people who work with their hands. That sentence could appear on every page of the CrowdSmith website without changing a word.
Tools for Schools funds the teacher in the high school classroom. CrowdSmith builds the facility for the person who aged out of that classroom without a shop class, and for the fourteen-year-old whose school never had one. Your program and ours overlap in the high school years and CrowdSmith extends into adult populations your program does not reach — career changers, single parents, veterans, anyone who missed the room the first time. The programs are not competitive. They are sequential. One ends where the other begins.
Every Harbor Freight store has a concrete floor. Narrow aisles. Red price tags. Nothing aspirational. The person who walks in is buying a tool she can afford so she can do the work. CrowdSmith’s Station One has the same floor. The complete operational architecture is published at crowdsmith.org. We are not asking for philanthropy. We are describing a building full of your tools, staffed by people who teach other people to use them, in a corridor where the median household income is half the county average.
You built the store where everyone can afford the tool. We are building the room where everyone can learn to use it. The floor is the same floor.
Two boys were on their own at sixteen. One in Los Angeles, one somewhere else. Neither had a room that stayed. Neither had the scaffolding. One of them built 1,600 stores full of tools. The other one is building a room where people learn to use them.
They have never met. They have no mutual acquaintance. The only connection between them is a fact that most people would never think to compare: the age at which you stop being someone’s responsibility and start being your own. Everything built after that moment — the stores, the foundation, the binder, the stations, the credential tracks, the letters — rests on the same floor. Not concrete. Not wood. The floor you build when nobody builds one for you.
This letter was written by an AI, but the sixteen-year-old in it is real. Both of them are.