Paul Limberg

The last two weeks have been totally crazy. I keep staring at my bank account like it's a glitch in the matrix. I refresh the app, and the numbers are still there—still surreal. Two commas. Seven digits. I'm a programmer from a town near Hannover, Germany, and until recently, I was renting a 40-square-meter apartment above a kebab shop. Now I could probably buy the building if I felt like it.

The app was a side project. A clean, privacy-first task manager—nothing revolutionary, just well-built and free of the bloat people complain about. I put it online, it caught some traction, and then suddenly a mid-sized American company wanted to acquire it. We negotiated for months. When the final offer came in, I didn't really believe it. I called my older brother, and all he said was, “Don’t screw it up.”

I’m 32, and for the first time in my life, money isn’t something I have to calculate before ordering food. I went out and bought my parents a new car—something safe, solid, nothing flashy. My dad got choked up when he sat in the driver’s seat. That was worth more than any of the zeros in my account.

Still, I haven’t told most of my friends. I don’t want to become the guy they talk about behind closed doors. I tried going to my regular café last week, and it felt... off. Like I didn’t belong anymore. I caught myself wondering if people could tell just by the way I walked in.

The weirdest thing is how quiet it is now. All those years, I dreamed of this moment—financial freedom, creative autonomy—and now that it’s here, I’m not even sure what to do with it. I’ve been walking a lot. No headphones. Just me and the city, trying to figure out what the hell comes next.

Everyone says it’s a dream come true. Maybe it is. But nobody tells you that when you finally stop running, you're left standing still with a lot of questions.