Craigslist for Everything Else

A Letter to Craig Newmark

Dear Mr. Newmark,

You accidentally killed the newspaper classified business and then spent years funding journalism to make up for it. That’s either guilt or integrity — probably both. Either way, it means you understand that building something useful can break something necessary, and that the builder has a responsibility to notice.

I’m a veteran. I know you’ve put significant resources into veteran causes. I also know you’ve funded civic tech, journalism, and trustworthy information infrastructure. So I’m writing to you about something that touches all three.

The Problem

Every community need — food, medicine, housing, legal help, childcare — has been turned into a profit extraction mechanism. The platforms that were supposed to connect people instead take 30%, 40%, 50% of every transaction. And when they IPO, the people who built the communities get nothing.

GoFundMe takes a cut of medical emergencies. Uber takes a cut of someone driving their own car. Etsy takes a cut of handmade crafts. The platform always eats first.

What We Built

Liana Banyan is what Craigslist would look like if you designed it today, knowing everything you know now about what platforms become.

  • Cost + 20%. That’s our margin on everything. Not “up to 20%” — exactly 20% over actual cost.
  • Workers own the platform. Every person who contributes earns medallions — blockchain-verified equity.
  • Three commercial portals fund charitable initiatives. The .com, .biz, and .net generate margin that sustains the .org.

We’ve built six ready-to-launch initiatives: neighbors feeding neighbors, volume grocery purchasing, cheap prescription access, group legal defense, community buying power, and medical savings accounts.

The platform is live. The patents are filed. The first medallions are minted.

What I’m Asking

Not money. I’m asking for your network.

You’ve spent decades finding people who build trustworthy things. I need introductions to operators who know how to scale community-driven solutions without breaking them. A fractional CTO who’s seen what happens when good ideas meet bad architecture. Someone in food security who can tell me what I don’t know yet.

One connection from you could save me a year of trial and error. And a year matters when people are choosing between insulin and rent.

I’m prepared to hand any or all of these initiatives to people you trust. The goal isn’t for me to run this. The goal is for it to exist and work.

With respect for what you’ve built and rebuilt,

Jonathan Jones Founding Manager, Liana Banyan Corporation Veteran, U.S. Army November 2025

P.S. — You kept Craigslist simple when everyone said to monetize it. That restraint created more value than the monetization ever would have. I think about that a lot.

406-578-1232 Support@LianaBanyan.org