#129 - Simone Giertz

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast. Today's episode is with Simone Yatch. Simone describes herself as a maker slash robotics enthusiast slash non-engineer. She's also known as the Queen of Shitty Robots. She runs a YouTube channel about those robots and is a co-host on Tested with Adam Savage from MythBusters. You can find her on YouTube and on Twitter at Simone Yatch. I'll also link up her Patreon in the description.
All right, here we go.
All right, Simone Yatch, welcome to the podcast.

**Simone Giertz** (0:32)
Hey, thanks for having me.

**Craig Cannon** (0:34)
How you doing?

**Simone Giertz** (0:35)
I'm great. I'm really excited to be invited to Y Combinator. I've followed you for a very long time and I'm like, this is where it happens.

**Craig Cannon** (0:44)
Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that YouTube entrepreneurship would lead you here.

**Simone Giertz** (0:47)
No, well, it's been a pass, but it led me here and I'm very happy about it.

**Craig Cannon** (0:53)
So for people who don't know you, you are the self-proclaimed builder of Shitty Robots slash YouTuber.

**Simone Giertz** (1:00)
Yeah. I mean, the Queen of Shitty Robots was the dubious title the internet gave me.
Yeah, it started as people calling me the Queen of slash R slash Shitty Robots on Reddit and then kind of the slash R dropped somewhere along the way. All I'm trying to say is that I did not come up with that title myself because I'm a very humble person.

**Craig Cannon** (1:23)
Which obviously led you to making videos about yourself on YouTube.

**Simone Giertz** (1:26)
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just a parade of humility, my whole YouTube channel. But yeah, I'm an inventor and YouTuber is generally the title I describe myself with.

**Craig Cannon** (1:36)
Cool.
So I want to start with a quote from your mom. And she says, according to you, whatever feeds the ego kills the soul.

**Simone Giertz** (1:44)
Yeah.

**Craig Cannon** (1:45)
And I thought that was hilarious given your occupation at the moment.

**Simone Giertz** (1:49)
Yeah. And her occupation too. Like she's a TV host back in Sweden and has worked as a TV host for, I mean, more than 20 years. So yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I agree with it. And it's kind of hard to have, or you're trying to find a balance of having a job that does have a lot of ego in it, but at the same time, like not letting it make you an asshole.

**Craig Cannon** (2:16)
Right. And moreover, there's the trick of like staying in love with the thing you're doing.

**Simone Giertz** (2:22)
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

**Craig Cannon** (2:24)
Because now like your first video, well, your first video I saw was in Swedish, and then like your second video was 30 seconds long, right? And then you become famous for something like that.

**Simone Giertz** (2:35)
Yeah. I mean, the first project I had that kind of went viral was the toothbrush helmet, which is a skateboard helmet, has a robot arm and the forehead kind of like a unicorn horn and a toothbrush at the end of it, and it brushes my teeth.
Yeah. And that was the first like shitty robot project that I published and it kind of like, I think within four months after that, I started working full time with my YouTube channel, which is crazy.

**Craig Cannon** (3:00)
It's kind of unprecedented.

**Simone Giertz** (3:02)
It was, I mean, I was in a phase in my life where I could make that transition because I was living in San Francisco. I was working as an intern at an electronics company and I was, my visa was expiring. So I was moving home and I had kind of like planned to go home and like maybe do some freelance work. And I was like moving in with my mom and just trying to like, I just wanted to bring down my costs as much as possible so that I could really spend time just exploring things that I was interested in. That was kind of like me creating this like leap year type environment for myself. So it was very easy for me to make the transition. Like it was never that I was like, I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna start working full time with YouTube. I was more like, I'm just like freelancing and kind of like giving some Arduino workshops and trying to get around with that. And then like the YouTube channel just kind of snowballed.

**Craig Cannon** (3:50)
Yeah. Was it obvious to you early on that that's where you were drawn to or were you just all about dabbling in the beginning and like trying stuff out?