Simone
Giertz

By 2016, she had joined Adam Savage's Tested.com project, moved to San Francisco, and appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In 2017, Google sponsored an astronaut training video series. The "shitty robots" were working - in the specific sense that they were generating attention, revenue, and a growing community of people who found something liberating in watching someone make things that didn't work.

In April 2018, Giertz was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor - a meningioma she named "Brian." She had surgery in May 2018. She documented this publicly, with the same straight-faced honesty she brought to everything else. The tumor, the surgery, the recovery - all of it on camera, all of it processed in real time with her audience. She delivered a TED Talk the same year: "Why You Should Make Useless Things," which became one of the more-watched talks from that cohort. Her argument: that making something without any pressure to succeed is the fastest path to creative freedom.

In 2019, after completing radiation therapy, she unveiled Truckla - a Tesla Model 3 she and collaborators had converted into a functioning pickup truck. The video documenting the build ran 31 minutes. It received 8 million views in 10 days. This was before Tesla announced the Cybertruck. The media coverage was extensive. The Wired cover that December showed her standing next to the truck, looking unsurprised that this had happened.

That same year, she launched the Every Day Calendar on Kickstarter. It is a habit-tracking wall calendar with a front panel made from printed circuit board, 24-carat gold-plated touch pads, and a sustainable bamboo frame. It is, deliberately, not internet-connected. The campaign raised $593,352 - more than eleven times the original goal. The calendar was subsequently stocked by the MoMA Design Store. The Queen of Shitty Robots had made something with genuine craft. Nobody was surprised. Everyone was delighted.

In 2022, she launched Yetch Studio as a standalone product design company. The name comes from the way her last name, Giertz, is actually pronounced. The shop expanded to include the Coat Hinger, the Incomplete White Puzzle, and other objects that sit in the specific register of useful-but-strange that Giertz has always inhabited. Each product carries that particular sensibility: it solves something real, but with a particular quality of attention that most product design misses.

In 2026, she launched the Laundry Chair on Kickstarter. The concept is a solid hardwood accent chair with a circular clothing rail mounted on a ball-bearing swivel - specifically designed for the pile of clothes that are too worn for the drawer but too clean for the laundry basket. The campaign raised $966,883 from 997 backers against a $50,000 goal, before the campaign had even closed. Delivery is estimated for November 2026.