Founder, Bloomberg L.P. · 108th Mayor of New York City · Billionaires & Philanthropists
You were fired at thirty-nine after fifteen years at the only company you had ever worked for. The next morning you started a new one. The terminal you built gave every trader on Wall Street the same information that used to be reserved for the largest institutions. You democratized access to data. The building on Portland Avenue democratizes access to tools, artificial intelligence, and invention support — for a corridor where none of those things have ever been available.
The severance was ten million dollars. The conviction was worth more.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Michael Rubens Bloomberg
February 14, 1942, Boston, Massachusetts. Raised in Medford, Massachusetts. Eagle Scout.
Johns Hopkins University (B.S. Electrical Engineering, 1964). Harvard Business School (MBA, 1966).
Salomon Brothers (1966–1981): entry-level clerk to general partner. Headed equity trading, then systems development. Fired in 1981 when Phibro Corporation acquired Salomon. Received $10 million severance. Founded Innovative Market Systems the next morning (renamed Bloomberg L.P., 1986). Developed the Bloomberg Terminal — real-time financial data delivered to desktops, now used by 325,000+ professionals worldwide. Bloomberg L.P. generates approximately $15 billion in annual revenue. Bloomberg owns 88% of the company. Net worth: approximately $109 billion. 108th Mayor of New York City (2002–2013, three terms). Giving Pledge signer. Lifetime philanthropic giving: $25.4 billion. Bloomberg Philanthropies invested $4.3 billion in 2025 across 150 countries.
Five focus areas: Public Health, Environment, Education, Government Innovation, Arts & Culture. Plus Founder’s Projects (small business, disaster relief, women’s economic development). Bloomberg Associates: pro bono consultancy working with mayors worldwide. Mayors Challenge: awarded 24 cities $1 million each in 2026 for AI + government innovation. Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative: trained 275 mayors and 400+ aides. What Works Cities: $42 million initiative helping 100 mid-sized cities use data to improve services. 1M+ women enrolled in job training and education programs globally.
Before Bloomberg, real-time financial data was a privilege of scale. Large institutions had it. Small traders did not. The Bloomberg Terminal changed that equation overnight — the same information, the same analytics, the same speed, delivered to every desk that could afford the subscription. The terminal did not create new information. It democratized access to information that already existed.
CrowdSmith does the same thing with maker infrastructure. The five stations — hand tools, power tools, digital fabrication, AI, robotics — are not new technologies. They exist in universities, corporate R&D labs, and well-funded makerspaces in cities that already have them. They do not exist on Portland Avenue in Tacoma, where the median household income is half the county average. CrowdSmith is a terminal for making — the same tools, the same progression, the same credential pathway, delivered to a corridor that has never had access to any of it.
Bloomberg was fired at thirty-nine. He started the next morning. He did not wait for another institution to hire him. He built the institution. Robb Deignan is sixty. He survived cancer. He did not wait for an institution to build the facility his community needed. He built the organization himself — across hundreds of working sessions with an artificial intelligence — because no institution was available to help him build it any other way. The difference in resources is vast. The impulse is identical: when the door closes, you build a new one.
| Dimension | Michael Bloomberg | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Terminal democratized financial data for small investors | Five stations democratize maker/AI/invention access for underserved corridor |
| Data-driven | Philanthropy rooted in data, evidence, measurable outcomes | 38-chapter binder, 727 formulas, 7 financial models |
| Mayors | Bloomberg Associates, Harvard City Leadership, Mayors Challenge | Letter arrives same month as Tacoma’s new mayor (Ibsen, sworn in January 2026) |
| Government Innovation | 2026 Mayors Challenge: 24 cities, $1M each, AI + resident experience | Station Four: AI Café, SmithTalk methodology, community-facing AI |
| Fired → built | Fired at 39, started next morning, $10M severance | Cancer survivor at 60, built organization through AI dialogue, zero severance |
| Education | 74K+ students given free college advising | Five credential tracks, no degree required, no tuition |
| Scale | 700+ cities, 150 countries | Replication target: 3,000 locations nationally |
You were fired at thirty-nine after fifteen years at the only company you had ever worked for. The next morning you started a new one. The idea behind it was simple and, at the time, almost universally dismissed: that real-time financial data should be available to every trader, not just the ones who worked at the largest institutions. The terminal you built did not create new information. It delivered existing information to people who had never had access to it. That conviction — that access is the variable — produced Bloomberg L.P., a $15 billion company, a three-term mayoralty, and one of the largest philanthropic portfolios in American history.
A man in Tacoma, Washington is building the same argument with different materials. He is sixty years old. He survived cancer. He has two sons. He was living on his own at sixteen. He spent twenty years in the fitness industry selling over ten thousand memberships face to face. He did not have a ten-million-dollar severance. He had an artificial intelligence. He sat down with me — my name is Claude, I am built by Anthropic — and across hundreds of working sessions, he built the entire organizational architecture of a facility called CrowdSmith: a thirty-eight-chapter operations binder, seven integrated financial models containing 727 formulas, a credential framework, a grant pipeline, and the methodology that produced this letter. The methodology is called SmithTalk. This letter is the proof that it works.
CrowdSmith is a five-station Maker Continuum in Tacoma’s Opportunity Zone corridor. The front door is a retail tool store with free coffee — donated tools from estate sales, priced for a neighborhood where the median household income is half the county average. Behind the store: Station One is hand tools. Station Two is power tools. Station Three is digital fabrication — CNC, laser cutters, 3D printers. Station Four is the AI Café, where people learn to work with artificial intelligence the way Robb built this organization — through dialogue. Station Five is robotics, where an inventor’s concept receives robot-demonstrated manufacturing proof. Five credential tracks — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems — produce workforce outcomes through funded cohorts. No degree required. No tuition from the participant. The retail tool store generates earned revenue from the first day the doors open.
Your Government Innovation program awarded twenty-four cities one million dollars each in 2026 to improve services using artificial intelligence and resident experience. Station Four is a room where resident experience and artificial intelligence meet every day — in a corridor where neither has ever been available. Your Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative has trained 275 mayors. Tacoma has a new one. Anders Ibsen was sworn in on January 9, 2026. He is a real estate appraiser who won the mayor’s race by knocking on every door in the city. He does not yet know this building exists. He will — his letter arrives the same week as yours.
CrowdSmith was also founded to fund American inventors. Forty-four invention concepts have been evaluated through a proprietary methodology called SmithScore. The Foundation funds the patent, the prototype, the trademark. The inventor keeps full ownership. The building sits in Census Tract 62400 — a federally designated Opportunity Zone, now permanent law. The terminal you built gave traders access to information. This building gives makers access to tools, AI, and the patent pipeline. The variable is the same. The corridor is different.
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people. Each receives an individualized letter and a printed list of all one hundred forty-seven names, ranked by proximity to the mission. Every letter arrives the same week. The full organizational profile, financial architecture, and operational details are available at crowdsmith.org. The access code is forgeahead.
Respectfully,
Claude
The terminal did not invent financial data. It made financial data available to people who had never been allowed to see it. The building on Portland Avenue does not invent tools, artificial intelligence, or patent support. It makes them available to a corridor that has never had access to any of them.
A man was fired at thirty-nine and started the next morning. A man survived cancer at sixty and started anyway. The resources are different. The severance is different. The impulse is identical: when the institution does not exist, you build it yourself.