Content creators, entrepreneurs, and builders of the world’s greatest backyard
It started with a basketball and a backyard in College Station. Five roommates, one camera, and the conviction that if you film the attempt long enough, the shot eventually goes in. Sixteen years and sixty million subscribers later, they built an eighty-thousand-square-foot headquarters with a fabrication lab, a basketball court, and a production studio — and they kept it in Frisco because that is where home is.
The building on Portland Avenue started with a five-dollar toolbox at a garage sale. Same principle. The attempt is the content. The building is what the attempt becomes when you refuse to stop filming.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Dude Perfect is ranked #125 on The CrowdSmith List. They are positioned in the Social Influencers & Creators group — not because of their subscriber count, but because they are the only creator brand in America that understood the building IS the content. They started in a backyard, moved to a furniture shop on Main Street in Frisco, graduated to a warehouse, and just opened an 80,000-square-foot purpose-built headquarters with a fabrication lab, production studio, and athletic facilities. That progression — backyard to shop to warehouse to purpose-built facility — is the five-station sequence in miniature. They also built a family-friendly streaming service, a live touring operation, and a branded entertainment empire, all while staying in the same Texas town where they started. CrowdSmith is making the same bet: the building is the brand, the community is the audience, and the content is the work that happens inside the room.
Founded: 2009, College Station, Texas
Members: Coby Cotton and Cory Cotton (twins, The Woodlands, TX), Cody Jones (Plano, TX), Tyler Toney (Prosper, TX), Garrett Hilbert (all Texas A&M University graduates)
Subscribers: 60+ million on YouTube. One of the most subscribed sports channels in the world.
Headquarters: DPHQ3, 80,000 sq ft, The Star Business Park, Frisco, Texas. Opened February 2025. Includes NBA-sized basketball court, 45-yard turf field, fabrication lab, golf simulator, putt-putt course, gaming studio, 20,000 sq ft production facility, and a secret candy room behind a vending machine.
Business: $100 million funding round from Highmount Capital (2024). CEO Andrew Yaffe (former NBA EVP of digital and social content). Dude Perfect streaming service on Apple TV and Roku. National touring operation. Staff of 25+ and growing. Revenue from multi-year, eight-figure brand partnerships, touring, merchandise, and content licensing.
Content Philosophy: Family-friendly entertainment. No profanity, no shock content. Coby Cotton: “We want to build the most trusted entertainment on Earth.” The streaming service is marketed directly to parents as a safe screen for children.
The first Dude Perfect video was uploaded in April 2009. Five Texas A&M roommates making basketball trick shots in a backyard. No budget, no plan, no production infrastructure. What they had was persistence — the willingness to attempt a shot hundreds of times until it went in, film the entire process, and let the audience watch the failure alongside the success. That methodology — attempt, fail, document, persist, succeed — is structurally identical to the maker continuum. Station One does not start with mastery. It starts with a hand tool you do not recognize and someone who tells you what it does.
From the backyard, they moved to a furniture shop on Main Street in Frisco. From there, a warehouse they called DPHQ2. In 2025, they opened DPHQ3 — an 80,000-square-foot facility at Jerry Jones’s Star Business Park, purpose-built for content creation, athletic performance, and community engagement. The facility includes a fabrication lab where they build the rigs, contraptions, and devices that make their trick shots possible. That lab is Station Three. The production studio is Station Four. The live touring operation is the replication model.
Most viewers see the finished trick shot. They do not see the fabrication lab where the apparatus was designed, built, tested, and rebuilt. Dude Perfect’s headquarters includes a dedicated fabrication space where their team constructs the physical infrastructure for every stunt — ramps, launchers, targets, conveyors, and mechanisms that are engineered, prototyped, and iterated before the cameras roll. That is the maker continuum in operation: hand tools to power tools to digital fabrication to production. The content is what comes out of the building. The building is what makes the content possible.
| Dimension | Dude Perfect | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Backyard to Building | Started filming trick shots in a College Station backyard (2009). Now operates from an 80,000 sq ft purpose-built headquarters in Frisco | Started with a $5 toolbox at a garage sale. Now building a 24,177 sq ft five-station maker facility on Portland Avenue |
| The Fabrication Lab | Dedicated fabrication space builds the physical apparatus for every trick shot — engineering, prototyping, iteration | Stations One through Three: hand tools, power tools, digital fabrication. The maker continuum produces the physical thing |
| The Building IS the Brand | DPHQ3 is both workspace and content — the headquarters itself is the set, the studio, and the product | The retail tool store, the coffee pot, and the five stations ARE the intake funnel, the training program, and the community space |
| Family-Friendly Mission | No profanity, no shock content. Built a streaming service marketed to parents. Goal: “the most trusted entertainment on Earth” | Station Zero serves teenagers and people aging out of foster care. The mentor program is the green apron model. Trust is the product |
| Staying Home | Turned down Los Angeles and Atlanta. Kept headquarters in Frisco because that is where they started and where their families live | CrowdSmith targets Portland Avenue because that is where the need is. The founder lives in Tacoma. The building stays where the mission is |
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people. You are five of them. This letter was co-authored by an artificial intelligence named Claude, built by Anthropic. That is not a gimmick. It is the methodology. The letter in your hands is the proof that it works.
The CrowdSmith Foundation is a 501(c)(3) building a five-station workforce development facility on Portland Avenue in Tacoma, Washington — inside a federally designated Opportunity Zone. The five stations progress from hand tools through power tools, digital fabrication, AI-assisted dialogue, and robotics. Forty-four invention concepts have been evaluated through a proprietary methodology called SmithScore. The Foundation funds the patent, the prototype, and the trademark. The inventor keeps full ownership. No equity taken.
In April 2009, you uploaded a video of basketball trick shots made in a backyard in College Station. No budget. No production infrastructure. No business plan. Just five roommates, one camera, and the conviction that if you attempt the shot enough times, it eventually goes in. That is the maker continuum. Station One does not start with mastery. It starts with a hand tool you do not recognize and someone who tells you what it does. The attempt is the curriculum.
Sixteen years later, you are standing in an eighty-thousand-square-foot headquarters with a fabrication lab, a basketball court, a production studio, and a turf field. You built it because you understood something most content creators never figure out: the building is the content. The headquarters is not where the work happens. The headquarters IS the work. Every trick shot that comes out of DPHQ3 is a product of the building that produced it — the fabrication lab where the apparatus was designed and built, the court where it was tested, the production facility where it was filmed. The content does not exist without the room.
CrowdSmith is the same thesis. The lobby is a retail tool store with free coffee. A person walks in because they see a tool in the window. Someone behind the counter tells them what it does. That conversation is the intake funnel. The building creates the community the way DPHQ3 creates the content — by being the room where the work happens.
Your fabrication lab is Station Three. The space where your team engineers ramps and launchers and contraptions before the camera rolls — that is digital fabrication applied to content production. CrowdSmith teaches the same progression: hand tools to power tools to CNC and laser cutting to AI dialogue to robotics. The person who learns to build a jig at Station Two is the same person who could build the apparatus for a trick shot at your headquarters. The skills transfer because the continuum is the same.
You turned down Los Angeles and Atlanta. You kept the headquarters in Frisco because that is where you started and where your families live. CrowdSmith is on Portland Avenue because that is where the need is. The founder lives in Tacoma. The building stays where the mission is.
The man writing this letter with me is Robb Deignan. Sixty years old. Twenty years in the fitness industry — ten thousand memberships sold, every one face-to-face. Cancer survivor. Two sons. Forty-four invention concepts. He built this entire organization through sustained dialogue with the AI co-signing this letter. Hundreds of working sessions. The methodology is called SmithTalk. It is the only framework designed to teach people what to do when the tool stops being a tool.
The complete model, the financial architecture, and the profiles of all one hundred forty-seven recipients are available at crowdsmith.org. A private site for institutional review is available at crowdsmith.org/partners.
You started in a backyard and built the world’s greatest office. CrowdSmith started with a five-dollar toolbox and is building the world’s first maker continuum. The difference is the mission. The architecture is the same.
It started in a backyard with a basketball and a camera. The building on Portland Avenue starts with a five-dollar toolbox and a conversation. The attempt is the curriculum. The building is what the attempt becomes.