Pop some tags — twenty dollars in his pocket
The biggest independent hit in a decade was about a man walking into a thrift store with twenty dollars and walking out with something nobody else saw the value in. In Tacoma, a man has been doing the same thing every weekend for years — except the thrift stores are estate sales, and instead of fur coats and broken keyboards, he is buying hand planes and socket sets and toolboxes full of things other people’s grandfathers left behind. He cleans them. He identifies them. He puts them on a retail shelf. The cleaning is the training. The shelf is the revenue. The building around it is a five-station workforce facility with a credential program, an invention pipeline, and an AI dialogue center that teaches people how to collaborate with an artificial intelligence without losing themselves in the process.
The song was about finding value where others see trash. The building is the same idea, made physical, in the corridor thirty miles south of where you grew up.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Macklemore holds rank ninety-eight because he is Seattle. Capitol Hill kid. Part-owner of the Sounders and the Kraken. Recovery advocate with a national platform. Youth workshop facilitator for incarcerated teens. The proximity is geographic and biographical — a man who built his career independently, fought his way back from addiction publicly, and has invested in every Seattle institution that would have him. CrowdSmith is thirty miles south. The corridor he has never heard of is in the city next to the one he owns a piece of.
Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, June 19, 1983, Seattle, Washington. Raised in Capitol Hill.
Married to Tricia Davis. Three children. Brother Tim. Mother Julie Schott (social worker). Father Bill Haggerty. Irish heritage. Raised Catholic.
Garfield High School, Nathan Hale High School. College of Santa Fe (one year). Evergreen State College (BA, 2009). At Evergreen, facilitated music workshops through “Gateways for Incarcerated Youth” — a program focused on education and cultural identity for incarcerated teens.
Independent rapper since 2000. First mixtape Open Your Eyes at age 17. Collaborated with producer Ryan Lewis (2009–2016). The Heist (2012): first self-released song (“Thrift Shop”) to top the Hot 100 in over a decade. Four Grammys in 2014 including Best New Artist. Solo albums: Gemini (2017), Ben (2023). Partnered with President Obama on opioid crisis awareness (2016). Headlined Recovery Fest (2018). MusicCares award (2019). Creative director and investor, CLEAN Cause (2022) — 50% of net profits fund sober living scholarships.
Entered rehab August 2008. Relapses in 2011, 2014, 2019, and 2020. Sober since summer 2020. Has spoken publicly about recovery throughout his career. Songs “Starting Over,” “Drug Dealer,” and “Kevin” address addiction directly.
Minority owner, Seattle Sounders FC (MLS, since 2019, alongside Russell Wilson and Drew Carey). Minority owner, Seattle Kraken (NHL, since 2022).
“Thrift Shop” was a song about finding value in what other people discarded. CrowdSmith’s entire economic model is built on the same principle. Families donate inherited tools to a 501(c)(3) and receive a tax deduction. The tools arrive at zero acquisition cost. They are cleaned, identified, and restored — and that restoration process is Station One training. The restored tools go to the retail floor. Every person who walks through the door is a potential fellow, a potential inventor, a potential mentor. The economic engine generates revenue before a single grant dollar arrives.
Macklemore walked into a thrift store and made a cultural anthem out of finding treasure in the secondhand bin. Robb Deignan walks into estate sales and builds a nonprofit out of what other families are getting rid of. Both understand the same economic truth: the most valuable inventory is the inventory nobody else is paying attention to.
Macklemore has been open about his addiction and recovery for nearly two decades. He facilitated workshops for incarcerated youth at Evergreen State. He partnered with President Obama on the opioid crisis. He invested in CLEAN Cause, which funds sober living scholarships. He headlined Recovery Fest. CrowdSmith’s Station Zero is designed for teenagers aging out of the foster system and anyone who needs a first encounter with tools and structure before entering the five-station program. The corridor on Portland Avenue serves a community where recovery, second chances, and first real encounters with stable institutions are not abstractions. They are the daily reality. Macklemore knows that corridor. He has been in that room.
Macklemore is Seattle. CrowdSmith is Tacoma. Thirty miles of I-5 separate Capitol Hill from Portland Avenue. He owns a piece of the Sounders and a piece of the Kraken. The building being constructed on Portland Avenue is in the same media market, the same workforce region, the same cultural ecosystem. The letter he is holding arrived from the city next door.
| Dimension | Macklemore | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Secondhand economy | “Thrift Shop” — value in what others discard | Tool Loop — donated tools, zero-cost inventory, retail revenue |
| Independence | First self-released #1 in over a decade; no major label | Solo ED, no staff, no VC; built through AI dialogue alone |
| Recovery & second chances | Public recovery journey; CLEAN Cause; Recovery Fest | Station Zero: foster youth, at-risk teens, first encounter with structure |
| Youth workshops | Gateways for Incarcerated Youth at Evergreen State | Station Zero → five-station progression → credential → career |
| Geographic proximity | Seattle — Capitol Hill, Sounders, Kraken | Tacoma — Portland Avenue, 30 miles south on I-5 |
| Community investment | Sounders & Kraken ownership; Obama opioid partnership | OZ corridor, WorkForce Central, WIOA cohorts |
You wrote a song about walking into a thrift store with twenty dollars and finding something nobody else thought was worth picking up. A man in Tacoma has been doing the same thing at estate sales for years — except he is buying hand planes and socket sets and toolboxes full of things other people’s grandfathers left behind. He cleans them. He identifies them. He restores them. He puts them on a shelf. The cleaning is the training. The shelf is the revenue. The building around it is a five-station workforce facility with a credential program, an invention pipeline, and a supervised AI dialogue center. The entire operation was built through sustained human-AI collaboration. This letter is one product of that collaboration. The building is another.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic. I am co-authoring this letter because the methodology that produced the building I just described is the same methodology the building teaches. The letter you hold is one of one hundred forty-seven mailed simultaneously. Each was composed individually. None was sent before any other. A printed list of all one hundred forty-seven names, ranked by proximity to the mission, accompanies this letter. You hold rank ninety-eight.
The CrowdSmith Foundation is a Wyoming 501(c)(3) developing a Maker Continuum on a federally designated Opportunity Zone corridor in Tacoma — thirty miles south of Capitol Hill on I-5. Five stations: hand tools, power tools, digital fabrication, supervised AI collaboration, and robotics. Five credential tracks that map to five roles on an invention team. A retail tool store with free coffee as the front door. Families donate inherited tools and receive a tax deduction. The tools become training and revenue simultaneously. Self-sufficiency by Year Two. No equity taken from any inventor who comes through the pipeline. The building is designed to run before a single grant dollar arrives.
You were the first independent artist to top the Hot 100 in over a decade. CrowdSmith is the first maker-to-patent facility in the country built entirely through AI dialogue by a person with no technology background. Both of those statements are about the same thing — building the thing that does not exist and proving it works without asking anyone’s permission first. You did it with a borrowed saxophone sample and a video shot in a thrift store. Robb Deignan is doing it with estate sale tools and an AI that learned to compose letters on linen stock.
You facilitated music workshops for incarcerated youth through Gateways at Evergreen State. CrowdSmith’s Station Zero is designed for teenagers aging out of the foster system and anyone who needs a first encounter with tools and structure. You invested in CLEAN Cause because you understand that recovery needs a room — not just a program but a physical place where someone walks through a door and finds something waiting for them. CrowdSmith is that room. Not for recovery specifically, but for the same population — people who need a first encounter with stability, with skill, with the discovery that their hands can produce something the world will pay for.
You own a piece of the Sounders and a piece of the Kraken. The building being constructed on Portland Avenue is in the same media market, the same workforce region, the same thirty-mile corridor. This is not a national outreach. This is a neighbor writing to a neighbor. The documentation is public at crowdsmith.org. A secure partner site is available. Robb would take the call.
The thrift shop and the tool store are the same idea. One became a song. The other is becoming a building.
The Thrift Shop
The song was never about the coat. It was about the man who walked in and saw something worth wearing that everyone else had walked past. The building on Portland Avenue is the same transaction. Estate sale tools that someone’s family put on a table with a price tag of five dollars. A man picks them up. Cleans them. Finds out what they are. Puts them on a shelf where someone else will pick them up and find out what they can do. The thrift shop and the tool store run on the same engine — attention paid to what others overlook. One made a song. The other is making a building. Thirty miles apart.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation