How CrowdSmith Got Here.

CrowdSmith Foundation is a nonprofit. It was registered in Wyoming and approved by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) charity in early 2026. That means donations to the Foundation are tax-deductible. The Foundation builds and runs the maker facilities — the buildings where people earn the SmithFellow credential by moving through the five stations described on the Model page.

There is a second company attached to the Foundation. Its name is Anti-A Industries, and it is a regular for-profit company registered in Delaware. Anti-A owns the methods — the SmithTalk methodology, the curriculum, the platform, and the invention pipeline called SmithWorks. The Foundation pays Anti-A a license fee to use those methods. The split is simple. The Foundation builds people. Anti-A owns the toolbox they are built with. That separation is what lets the model spread to a second location, and a tenth, and a thousandth, without the founder having to be in every room.

Where it came from.

CrowdSmith started where two separate ideas met. The first was a problem the founder had carried for decades: he was an inventor with thirty-seven ideas that never got patents, because patent attorneys cost money he did not have. He wanted to build a place that helped people like him get their ideas protected. The second idea came from a five-dollar toolbox he picked up at a garage sale, which turned into a tool-collecting habit, which turned into a question. The founder had spent twenty years running health clubs, and he knew one thing for certain. Community forms around the thing on the counter, not the sign on the building. The tools were the thing on the counter.

Those tools turned into something bigger. They became the five stations of the Maker Continuum. The inventor problem became SmithWorks. The toolbox itself became the retail store at the front of the building. And the way the founder had been working with AI to figure all of this out — sitting across from it, over hundreds of long sessions, treating it as a real partner — that practice got a name. SmithTalk. It became the credential nobody else in the country teaches.

Everything you see on this site was built by one person working alongside an AI. The legal paperwork. The financial models. The curriculum. The grant strategy. The facility plans. The 147 letters going out to leaders in philanthropy, government, and industry. All of it. Not a team. Not a consulting firm. One founder, one AI, and hundreds of hours of real conversation. The methodology that built CrowdSmith is the same methodology taught in the AI Café. The building is the proof that it works.

Who built this.

CrowdSmith was founded by Robb Deignan. He spent twenty years running health clubs — signing up more than 10,000 members over that career. Health clubs are not exactly maker facilities, but the lessons travel. You learn what makes a person walk in for the first time. You learn what makes them come back the second time. You learn what keeps a place alive when the founder is not in the room. Foot traffic. More than one way to bring in money. A small, well-run operation. A culture that pulls people in instead of pushing them out. CrowdSmith is built on those same lessons.

The CrowdSmith idea came from a real loss. Robb took shop class as a kid. He loved it. His family moved, and the new school did not offer it. He spent the next thirty years watching shop class disappear from American schools entirely. Then a few things happened in close order. A rare illness. A drawer full of inventions he could not afford to patent. A five-dollar toolbox from a garage sale. Those pieces clicked together. The Maker Continuum is the answer to a question he has been asking most of his life: what would it take to rebuild the bridge between a person and a skill?

The pilot.

The first CrowdSmith facility will open in Tacoma. The first SmithFellow class will go through the program. Once WorkForce Central approves the credential, it qualifies for federal workforce dollars across the state of Washington — which means the program can be funded for the people who need it most. The pilot is where the model proves itself. One building, with real people coming through the door, doing real work, walking out with a real credential. It works in one location before it opens in 3,000.