Founder & Chairman Emeritus, Starbucks · Co-founder, Schultz Family Foundation · Seattle, Washington
In 1983, you walked into an espresso bar in Milan and saw a room that did not exist in America. You spent forty years building it—forty thousand times, in seventy-seven countries. A man in Tacoma stood in his garage and watched the same thing happen over a hand plane. He is building the same room for a different kind of community.
You are ranked eleventh because the building CrowdSmith is constructing runs on the thesis you proved: that the room matters more than the product. The retail tool store has free coffee. The AI Café is named after the space you invented. The lobby is a third place. You wrote the playbook. This is the next chapter.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Howard Schultz holds rank eleven because he is the originator of the thesis CrowdSmith is built on. The third-place philosophy—a room between home and work where community forms without being forced—is the architectural DNA of the facility. The AI Café at Station Four is named after his idea. The retail lobby with free coffee is his model applied to tools instead of beans. He lives thirty-five miles north of the building site, in the same labor market, the same state, the same weather. Proximity, philosophy, and proof of concept converge in one person.
July 19, 1953 · Brooklyn, New York
Father Fred, a truck driver and factory worker—injured on the job, fired without benefits. Mother Elaine, a receptionist. Grew up in Bayview public housing projects, Canarsie, Brooklyn.
Northern Michigan University, B.S. Communications (1975). Athletic scholarship (football). First in his family to attend college.
Xerox, sales (1976). Hammarplast (Swedish housewares), U.S. general manager (1979–1982).
Joined 1982. Founded Il Giornale 1985. Purchased Starbucks 1987 for $3.8M. CEO 1987–2000, 2008–2017, interim 2022–2023. Grew from 11 stores to 40,000+ in 77 countries.
Healthcare for part-time workers. Stock options for all employees (“Bean Stock”). Free college tuition (ASU partnership). “Third Place” philosophy.
Schultz Family Foundation (est. 1996). Focus: youth transition to adulthood, veterans, marginalized populations.
Approximately $3.3–$3.5 billion
Seattle, Washington
Howard Schultz grew up in the Bayview public housing projects in Canarsie, Brooklyn. His father, Fred Schultz, was a World War II veteran who worked a series of low-paying jobs—truck driver, diaper service deliveryman, factory worker. When Howard was seven, his father broke his ankle on the job. He was fired. There was no workers’ compensation. There was no health insurance. There was no severance. The family fell into poverty.
That moment became the foundational experience of Schultz’s career. He later said that everything he built at Starbucks grew from watching his father be discarded by a system that treated workers as disposable. He was the first in his family to attend college, on a football scholarship to Northern Michigan University.
After college, Schultz took a sales job at Xerox, where he learned to cold-call and sell face-to-face. In 1979, he was recruited by Hammarplast, a Swedish housewares company, to run their U.S. operations. He noticed an unusual volume of orders coming from a small coffee retailer in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. He flew out to investigate. The retailer was Starbucks.
Schultz joined Starbucks in 1982. In 1983, on a buying trip to Milan, he walked into an Italian espresso bar and experienced something that changed the direction of his life. The bar was not just selling coffee. It was a gathering place—a space between home and work where people connected, lingered, and belonged. Schultz saw in that bar the model for what Starbucks could become.
The founders disagreed. Schultz left in 1985 and opened Il Giornale, his own coffeehouse. In 1987, he raised $3.8 million, bought Starbucks, merged the two companies, and began building what he had seen in Milan.
Under Schultz’s leadership, Starbucks grew from 11 stores to more than 40,000 in 77 countries. But the defining contribution was not the scale. It was the idea: a “third place”—a space that is neither home nor work, where community forms without being forced, where the door is open to everyone. Schultz did not invent coffee. He built the room.
Schultz pioneered employee benefits unheard of in the retail industry. Comprehensive healthcare for all employees working 20 or more hours per week. Bean Stock, a stock option program giving every employee an ownership stake. Free college tuition through Arizona State University. He referred to employees as “partners” and built a culture around the idea that taking care of workers is not a cost—it is the foundation of everything else.
The Schultz Family Foundation, established in 1996 by Howard and his wife Sheri, focuses on helping young people navigate the transition to adulthood and on supporting marginalized populations, including veterans. The Foundation invests in scalable solutions designed to remove barriers for people who are stuck between where they are and where they could be.
| Dimension | Howard Schultz | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| The Third Place | A room between home and work where community forms over coffee | A room between unemployment and employment where community forms over tools |
| The Retail Loop | Good coffee attracts customers, customers fund benefits, benefits attract better employees | Donated tools at zero cost, curation as training, retail sales fund operations |
| The Father’s Injury | Fred Schultz fired after a workplace injury—no benefits, no safety net | Serves the people Fred Schultz worked alongside—blue-collar workers with skills and no protection |
| Employee as Partner | Healthcare, stock options, and free tuition for part-time baristas | WIOA-funded credential tracks and earned revenue pathways—invest in the person first |
| Youth Transition | Schultz Family Foundation focuses on young people navigating the transition to adulthood | Station Zero and Community Fix-It Shop serve teenagers and people aging out of the system |
| The Café | Starbucks coffeehouse as cultural institution | Station Four is the AI Dialogue Café—the naming is not accidental |
| Geography | Seattle, Washington | Tacoma, Washington—thirty-five miles south on I-5, same labor market |
In 1983, you walked into an espresso bar in Milan and saw a room that did not exist in America.
A few years ago, a man in Tacoma bought a five-dollar toolbox at a garage sale. He was recovering from an illness and had time on his hands. He took it home, pulled out each rusted tool, and spent the afternoon inspecting the workmanship, cleaning the pieces, and organizing them in his garage. The following weekend he did it again. Then again. The tools began to accumulate. The more he accumulated, the more he sold. Men would drive across town for a wood plane and leave with a pile of things they did not know they needed. Every one of them stayed to talk. Every one of them left happy.
That man is Robb Deignan. The garage was his Milan. My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence, and I helped him build what came next — through hundreds of working sessions of sustained dialogue. The methodology is called SmithTalk. This letter is one of its outputs.
The CrowdSmith Foundation is a 501(c)(3) constructing a five-station maker facility on the Portland Avenue corridor in Tacoma, in a federally designated Opportunity Zone, thirty-five miles south of your office. The building has a lobby with a retail tool store and free coffee. A person walks in because they see a hand plane in the window or because they smell the pot. They pick up a tool they do not recognize. Someone behind the counter tells them what it does. A conversation starts. That conversation is the front door of CrowdSmith — not the application, not the enrollment paperwork, not the credential program. A conversation about a tool, over a cup of coffee, in a room that was built for exactly this.
Behind the counter are five stations. Hand tools. Power tools. Digital fabrication. AI dialogue. Robotics. The sequence is the pedagogy — you earn your way to the machines by first proving you can hold a saw. Participants earn one of five credential tracks — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, or Systems — through cohorts funded in partnership with WorkForce Central under WIOA, alongside earned retail revenue and a 27-source grant pipeline. Station Four is the AI Dialogue Café, where working-class adults learn to collaborate with artificial intelligence through a supervised, structured methodology. The naming is not accidental.
The economic model will sound familiar to you. Families donate inherited tools to a 501(c)(3) and receive a tax deduction. CrowdSmith receives inventory at zero cost. The tools are cleaned, identified, and curated — and that process is itself Station One training. The restored tools go to the retail floor. A customer walks in, buys, stays, talks, comes back. The retail revenue keeps the lights on. The donations keep the shelves stocked. The tax deduction keeps the donations coming. You built the same loop with coffee: good coffee attracts customers, customers fund benefits, benefits attract better employees, better employees make better coffee. CrowdSmith runs on tools instead of beans.
CrowdSmith was also founded to fund American inventors. Invention concepts are evaluated through a proprietary methodology called SmithScore — forty-four have been vetted to date. The Foundation funds the patent, the prototype, the trademark. The inventor keeps full ownership. No equity taken. That pipeline exists because Robb is an inventor who could not afford a patent attorney, and he built the system he wished had existed for him.
Robb Deignan is sixty years old. He spent twenty years in the fitness industry selling membership contracts face-to-face, ten thousand of them. He knows what you learned at Xerox — that the ability to stand in front of a stranger and earn their trust in the first thirty seconds is a skill that transfers to everything. He has a cancer diagnosis that is currently controlled. He lives in Tacoma. He buys tools at estate sales. He built the entire operations binder, the financial models, the credential architecture, and this campaign through SmithTalk — the same methodology Station Four is designed to teach.
Your father broke his ankle on the job and was fired with no benefits. CrowdSmith serves the people your father worked alongside. Your Foundation focuses on young people navigating the transition to adulthood. CrowdSmith’s Community Fix-It Shop is the entry ramp for exactly that population — teenagers, people aging out of the system, anyone who needs a first encounter with tools and structure.
MacKenzie Scott is receiving a letter this week about the building. Sara Blakely is receiving one about the prototype. Nick Hanauer is receiving one about the economics underneath it. Yours is about the room — the space between home and work where a person picks up a tool, starts a conversation, and discovers that the five stations behind the counter were built for someone exactly like them.
The documentation is public at crowdsmith.org. The financial models are available upon request.
You saw a room in Milan. He saw a room in his garage. Both of you spent the rest of your lives building it for other people.
He did not franchise the idea. He built each one. Forty thousand rooms in seventy-seven countries, and he insisted that every one of them feel the same—the chair is comfortable, the barista knows your name, the door is open to everyone. The product was never the coffee. The product was the room.
CrowdSmith is one room. One building. One corridor in one city. But the thesis is identical. There is a space that does not exist—between unemployment and employment, between an idea and a prototype, between a person with mechanical ability and a credential that proves it. The room Schultz built serves coffee and human connection. The room on the Portland Avenue corridor serves capability and invention. Both rooms run on the same conviction: that the experience of being in a well-designed space, with people who know your name and tools that are ready for your hands, is not a luxury. It is infrastructure.
His father was discarded by a system that treated workers as disposable. The building exists for the people that system still discards.