The Reclaim Media Story

About a hundred years ago, in 1999, Craig moved from Simi Valley California to Seattle Washington after finishing up his work at NASA (seriously). He started, and then closed, a not-so-successful web consultancy with his college classmate Carl, and was (not really) making ends meet tutoring math and science to high school and college kids.

And it was a good time, too. The conversation and teaching parts were surprisingly satisfying, but there were some notable drawbacks as well like being broke all the time and spending one or two hours a day driving somewhere in a car he had to open the sunroof on just to sit up straight. In Seattle. (Yeah, it's funny now. --Craig)

Then came strep throat, three weeks of misery and thousands of dollars of lost revenue and (uninsured) medical bills.

Craig: "Man, I gotta figure out a way to make some money at home."

About that time, Craig was also trying to learn Thai after a very enjoyable Thailand trip in late 2000 (Christmas in the jungle, far out! --Craig). At the dawn of the 21st century, the only Thai language courses were on cassette, and there wasn't a tape player in the house. All he had was a busted Walkman his housemate had scored at a rummage sale for a quarter that ate batteries and couldn't rewind.

Craig: "Man, I just can't be the only guy with this problem."

Craig researched what other services were charging for cassette-to-CD conversion, found their prices way too high for something that could be automated, and started Reclaim Media (actually "Cassettes2CDs" until late 2007) in the kitchen of his rental house, next to the refrigerator.

Five years and three offices later, we now employ five full-timers (with health insurance!) and take up 1500 square feet, with yet another expansion probably in the cards for 2008.

(But Craig can still only say "thank you," "hungry," "how much?" and "bathroom" in Thai.)