diy
(7)
Zack Nelson
Zack Nelson is the American YouTuber behind JerryRigEverything, the most-viewed smartphone repair and teardown channel on YouTube with over 10 million subscribers. Known for his systematic durability tests — scratch, burn, bend — he turned a $1,000 Jeep repair he did himself for $80 into a multi-million-view media empire. Beyond the broken screens and scorched phones, he co-founded Not-a-Wheelchair with his wife Cambry, building affordable off-road and ultra-custom wheelchairs made in the USA, and used his YouTube earnings to fund a full-size community library in Busia County, Kenya.
Dale Dougherty
Dale Dougherty is the founder of Make: magazine and Maker Faire, and widely credited as the father of the Maker Movement. A co-founder of O'Reilly Media, he launched the internet's first commercial web portal (GNN) in 1993, helped popularize the term 'Web 2.0' in 2004, and coined the word 'makers' to describe hands-on creators and tinkerers. Today he leads Make: Community LLC, an organization that inspires millions through DIY technology, education, and events spanning 40+ countries.
Laura Kampf
Laura Kampf is a German maker, craftsperson, and YouTube creator known for transforming raw materials - wood, metal, reclaimed objects - into functional art and furniture. Based in Los Angeles since 2024, she has built a global following of 845,000+ subscribers with weekly builds that blend engineering precision with an upcycler's sensibility. Her workshop motto, 'Every defect gets respect,' doubles as a life philosophy.
Mark Rober
Mark Rober is a former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer who spent seven years working on the Curiosity rover before becoming one of YouTube's most-watched science communicators with 77+ million subscribers. He founded CrunchLabs in 2022, an edtech company delivering hands-on STEM subscription boxes for children, and has helped raise over $94 million across three viral philanthropic campaigns (Team Trees, Team Seas, Team Water). In 2026 he invested $60 million to build Class CrunchLabs, a free STEM curriculum for teachers.
Simone Giertz
Simone Giertz is a Swedish-born inventor, YouTuber, and product designer best known as the 'Queen of Shitty Robots' - a self-styled title earned by building hilariously dysfunctional machines that helped her (and millions of viewers) overcome perfectionism. She parlayed viral robot comedy into a serious design career, founding Yetch Studio in 2022, whose products include the Every Day Calendar (sold at MoMA) and the Laundry Chair - a swivel-rail accent chair for 'half-dirty' clothes that raised nearly $1 million on Kickstarter in 2026.
William Osman
William Osman is an American engineer turned YouTuber whose channel turned a homemade 80-watt laser cutter into a comedy career. He builds absurd machines, films the result, and somewhere between a ham-and-cheese Vin Diesel and a backyard X-ray rig has become one of the loudest voices in the modern maker movement. In 2023 he co-founded Open Sauce, a creator-driven STEM convention that has since grown to more than 33,000 attendees.
Sophia Stel
Sophia Stel is a 27-year-old Vancouver-based Canadian alt-pop artist, singer, and self-producer whose music blends dreamy synths, auto-tuned alto vocals, skittering breakbeats, and rave-adjacent textures into something critics call the 'sonic lovechild of Ethel Cain and 070 Shake.' Growing up on Vancouver Island in a large religious household with 10 siblings, she taught herself production on GarageBand before building a makeshift studio in a nightclub basement. After years of bartending to fund her art, she broke through with her 2024 debut EP Object Permanence, scored a viral TikTok moment with 'I'll Take It' (8.6M+ Spotify streams), walked the Ann Demeulemeester SS26 runway, graced the NME cover, and in early 2026 became only the second artist signed to A24 Music - all while recording mostly from home on a 2013 MacBook.