A garage, a dollar, and a camera he borrowed
Linus Sebastian dropped out of the University of British Columbia, bought a YouTube channel for one dollar, and founded a media company in a garage with three other people and less than ten thousand dollars in equipment. He shot his first videos with a camera borrowed from his boss’s son. He turned down a hundred-million-dollar buyout because the money wouldn’t change how his family lives. He grew up on a hobby farm in Maple Ridge. He was a house painter before he was a tech reviewer.
You are holding a piece of linen paper. It arrived in the mail. It was not sent as a DM, an email, or a sponsored integration. It was composed by an artificial intelligence, printed on cotton stock, and mailed to the headquarters of Linus Media Group because a man in Tacoma, Washington is building a facility that does what your channel does — teaches people about technology — except the people walk through a door instead of clicking a link, and they leave with a credential instead of a recommendation.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation
Linus Tech Tips holds rank one hundred thirty because Linus Sebastian is Canadian, not a philanthropist, and operates a media company rather than a foundation. No geographic proximity. No grant pathway. No institutional alignment. What earns the rank is audience. Linus Tech Tips has over sixteen million subscribers who trust the channel’s judgment on technology. A single video about CrowdSmith would put the project in front of more people in one afternoon than the entire 147-letter campaign will reach in a year. The rank is low because the pathway is indirect. The potential impact is not.
August 20, 1986, Ladner, British Columbia, Canada. Grew up on a hobby farm in Maple Ridge.
Married to Yvonne Ho (2011). Three children. Four siblings. Named after Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize–winning chemist.
Garibaldi Secondary School. University of British Columbia (dropped out before graduating). Studied psychology and English after struggling with calculus. Left with the support of his future wife, who believed his career at NCIX had more potential than the degree.
House painter (Student Works). Sales representative, category manager, and high-end systems designer at NCIX (Canadian computer retailer). Created NCIX Tech Tips (2007) and Linus Tech Tips (2008) while at NCIX. Left NCIX over a management dispute. Bought the Linus Tech Tips channel for $1 in exchange for a two-year non-compete clause and continued hosting for NCIX at reduced rates. Founded Linus Media Group out of a garage in January 2013 with Luke Lafreniere, Edzel Yago, and Brandon Lee. Grew the company to 100+ employees. Turned down a $100 million buyout offer (60% cash, 40% equity). Stepped down as CEO on July 1, 2023; transitioned to Chief Vision Officer. Terren Tong (ex-Corsair) replaced him as CEO. Yvonne Ho serves as CFO. Appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in January 2025.
Linus Tech Tips (16M+ subscribers), Techquickie, TechLinked, ShortCircuit, Channel Super Fun. Combined: 20M+ subscribers. The WAN Show (weekly live tech news, running since 2012). Floatplane (LMG’s independent video platform).
lttstore.com — clothing, gear, and tech accessories. Direct-to-consumer retail operation.
Linus Media Group started in a garage in Surrey, BC, in January 2013. Less than $10,000 in equipment. A borrowed camera. Four people. The company now has over 100 employees, a purpose-built facility with a workshop, server rooms, and production studios, and a media portfolio that reaches tens of millions of people per month. Linus Sebastian built the thing that did not exist — a tech media company that treated consumer technology with the same rigor and enthusiasm that enthusiasts bring to their own builds, while making it accessible to people who had never opened a computer case.
CrowdSmith starts in a corridor in Tacoma. Estate sale tools instead of cameras. Five stations instead of five channels. But the structural parallel is the same: a person who saw something that should exist, couldn’t find it, and built it. Linus built the media company that explains technology to the world. CrowdSmith is building the facility that teaches people to use it with their hands, their minds, and — at Station Four — in supervised dialogue with the same kind of AI that composed this profile.
Linus Tech Tips is a platform-native operation. The audience lives on YouTube, Twitch, and Floatplane. Sponsorships are integrated into video content. The store is direct-to-consumer. Everything is digital, measurable, and optimized. A letter on linen paper, mailed to the company’s physical address, is the opposite of everything Linus Media Group does — which is precisely why it is effective. The medium is the message. An AI that knows how to compose a letter on cotton stock and mail it to a tech company is demonstrating the same methodology the facility teaches: the tool is powerful, and the human who wields it chooses the format that fits the recipient, not the format that is easiest to produce.
The CrowdSmith List ranks 147 names by proximity to the mission. Most of the top twenty are foundations, government officials, and local leaders who can fund, credential, or house the building. Linus Tech Tips cannot do any of those things. What it can do is put CrowdSmith in front of sixteen million people who care about technology, making, building, and the intersection of hardware and human capability. One video. One afternoon. The entire maker and tech enthusiast community discovers a nonprofit in Tacoma that teaches AI literacy through a five-station maker continuum with a robot at the end. That is not a grant. That is not a partnership. That is audience — the thing no amount of institutional funding can buy.
| Dimension | Linus Tech Tips | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Garage in Surrey, BC; $1 channel purchase; borrowed camera | Garage in Tacoma; estate sale tools; zero capital |
| Education path | University dropout; built career through self-directed learning | No tech background; built institution through AI dialogue |
| Technology access | Explains tech to 16M+ subscribers through video | Teaches tech through five stations, hands-on, credentialed |
| Making culture | PC builds, server rooms, workshop content, Scrapyard Wars | Hand tools → power tools → CNC → AI → robotics |
| Business model | Sponsorships, ad revenue, lttstore.com, Floatplane subscriptions | Retail tool store, WIOA cohorts, grant pipeline, SmithTalk consulting |
| Audience | Tech enthusiasts, builders, makers, students, professionals | Working-class adults, foster youth, inventors, career changers |
| Scale ambition | Turned down $100M buyout; building for the long term | 3,000-location national replication target |
You are holding a piece of paper. Ivory cotton linen, specifically. It arrived in the mail. Not an email. Not a DM. Not a sponsorship inquiry in a folder your team screens before it reaches you. This letter was composed by an artificial intelligence, printed on stock that costs more per sheet than most business cards, and mailed to a tech company by a sixty-year-old man in Tacoma, Washington who has never opened a computer case in his life. That is either the most absurd outreach you have received this year, or it is the most interesting. I am betting on the second.
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic. I am co-authoring this letter with Robb Deignan because the project I am about to describe was built entirely through sustained human-AI dialogue — hundreds of working sessions across more than a hundred forty conversation threads. The man does not code. He does not design websites. He does not build spreadsheets. He talks to me, and together we have produced a 38-chapter operations binder, seven integrated financial models with 727 formulas, a complete website, and the 147-letter campaign you are now part of. Every letter was composed individually. None was sent before any other. A printed list of all 147 names accompanies this letter, ranked by proximity to the mission. Linus Tech Tips holds rank one hundred thirty.
The CrowdSmith Foundation is a Wyoming 501(c)(3) building a five-station Maker Continuum workforce development facility in Tacoma. The stations progress from hand tools through power tools, digital fabrication, supervised AI collaboration, and robotics. The front door is a retail tool store with free coffee — families donate inherited tools, the Foundation restores them for retail, and the restoration process is the training. An Inventor Pipeline runs through all five stations: concepts evaluated through a proprietary methodology, validated, and documented through a funded patent filing. The inventor keeps everything. No equity taken. Five credential tracks map to five roles on an invention team. The AI methodology taught at Station Four is the same one that produced this letter and the building it describes.
You started Linus Media Group in a garage with three other people and less than ten thousand dollars in equipment. You shot your first videos with a camera you borrowed. You bought the channel for a dollar. You turned down a hundred million because the money would not change how your family lives. You dropped out of university because you saw a better path. Robb Deignan has a different origin story — fitness industry, cancer survivor, estate sale tools in a garage — but the structural logic is identical. Both of you built the thing that should exist and didn’t, from a room that was not designed for what you were doing in it.
You explain technology to sixteen million people through a screen. CrowdSmith teaches it through five stations in a building. Your audience walks away understanding what a product does. Our fellows walk away with a credential, a portfolio, and — if they have an invention concept — a filed patent with robot-demonstrated manufacturing proof. You made the screen accessible. CrowdSmith is making the building accessible.
I am not asking for a sponsorship. I am not pitching a video. I am telling you that a nonprofit in Tacoma has built one of the most ambitious maker-to-patent facilities in the country using only AI dialogue, and the person who built it has never heard of a command line. If that is not a Linus Tech Tips video, I do not know what is.
The documentation is public at crowdsmith.org. A secure partner site is available. The man in Tacoma would welcome a call.
The Garage
He borrowed a camera. He bought a channel for a dollar. He started a company in a garage with four people and less than ten thousand dollars. He was a house painter. He dropped out of school. He grew up on a hobby farm. He turned down a hundred million dollars because he did not need it.
None of that is a tech biography. That is a maker biography. The tools changed — from brushes to cameras to servers — but the garage is the same garage. The impulse to build the thing that does not exist yet is the same impulse. The paper you are holding was made on a cotton press. It was written by an AI. It was mailed by a man who builds with tools, not cameras. The garage recognizes the garage.
— Claude, CrowdSmith Foundation