Where haelp comes from and where it's going
Note: The audio is in German. It was recorded raw — we just let a voice memo run for the entire conversation, unedited.
This conversation is everything at once: interview and confession, product vision and biography, systems critique and personal therapy. Karla is a dramaturg — and she didn't interview me that night. She mirrored me.
For two and a half hours, we laid out what haelp is, where it comes from, and what it has unlocked in me. The result was surprisingly clear, even to myself. Here is the structure of it — not the full transcript, but the map.
Read the full transcript in English →
Main themes
1 — Biography & origin
Where do you start? I start with myself — with childhood, a parental divorce, the Swabian ethos of performance and propriety. The drive to never do anything wrong. People-pleasing as a survival strategy. And the quiet question underneath: Who am I, really, when nobody's watching?
2 — The early ideas
The first iteration wasn't even called haelp yet. Neither was the second. I describe the pattern that repeated over the years: idea, hustle, crash, job — and back to the idea. Always the same energy. Still not the right form. A trip to Southeast Asia breaks the pattern open.
3 — Cambodia & the original idea
A Buddhist monk in Cambodia. The moment that got me into programming — and gave rise to the first tangible form of haelp. Still physical, still tactile. Bracelets. Clean water wells. Making social impact visible. Underneath it all, already the same question: How do you make connection measurable?
4 — Capitalism, democracy, failure
Karla brings the first hard argument: social impact within capitalism remains structurally undemocratic. Billionaires decide what's good for the world. I burn myself and a relationship on the first iteration. And start over from scratch.
5 — Cycles & digital iteration
Crypto, dual currency, universal basic income — I expand the idea until it nearly collapses under its own weight. Over-engineering as an escape from actually starting. An entire year of teaching myself to code. In the end, the realization: the most complex version isn't always the right one.
6 — Volunteering & mutual aid
A new iteration: skills matching for volunteering. The Impact Wallet — a system that tracks not just money, but time and energy. The attempt to make engagement visible and felt. Still the same root: people should be seen by each other.
7 — Karla's core diagnosis
Karla hits the core: the actual product isn't the app, not the action — it's the story people get to tell about themselves afterward. People need a plot for their lives that makes sense. haelp gives them one.
8 — The turning point: Tenerife
The moment everything comes from. I'm lying on the beach in Tenerife — surrounded by families, couples, travelers, strangers. And I feel profoundly structurally alone. Not lonely in the personal sense. Lonely in the systemic sense. That was the moment haelp found its true form.
"There is no socially acceptable protocol. No gesture, no signal, no invitation for telling a stranger: I'm open to connecting. The default in public space is: leave me alone, unless you have a reason."
9 — What haelp believes
- Proximity does not equal connection. Physical closeness doesn't create social closeness. That's not a personal failure — it's a structural one.
- The invitation is missing. There is no protocol for signaling openness toward strangers.
- We default to distrust. The default toward strangers is negative. Until that default is reversed, nothing bigger can emerge.
- The body comes before the mind. Connection needs to be felt before it can be understood. Eye contact, oxytocin, physical co-presence.
- This is an experiment. I don't have all the answers. haelp is a hypothesis about human nature — one that needs to be proven.
10 — The experience
What does haelp feel like? You toggle "I'm open." No profile, no photo, no name. The system matches you anonymously with the nearest open person in your vicinity. Your phone becomes a compass. A haptic heartbeat — getting faster the closer you get. You find each other. You look at each other. And when you're ready, you say:
"I see you. I'm human. You're human. I mean you no harm."
Then the reveal: the anonymous silhouette on your screen turns around. A name. A face. You met a human being before you met an identity. Bias couldn't form — because there was nothing to be biased against.
11 — The peace mission
I say haelp could win the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean it. The origin of most human conflict is a single assumption: that the other person is a threat. haelp starts right there — before the assumption can take shape.
"haelp starts where everything starts — with two humans who see each other."
12 — Karla's reaction
How does someone react when they hear about haelp for the first time? Karla describes two spontaneous impulses: curiosity — like a surprise package, you don't know what's inside, and that's exactly what makes it exciting. And resistance — for people who structurally perceive strangers as a threat.
She recalls experiments where political opponents speak anonymously to each other, only allowed to see each other at the end — and end up crying in each other's arms.
13 — haelp as self-healing
The unexpected moment of the evening. I realize: haelp has always been therapy for me, too. What if the recognition haelp wants to create between strangers first needs to happen between me and myself?
I hadn't found my own "place" for my self-image yet — one that isn't tied to external validation. That changes tonight.
14 — Karla's dramaturgical framework
Karla lays bare the dramaturgical skeleton: Backstory → lack → gap → transformation. My gap: "You're not enough." My external goal — productivity, success — as a lifeline. Underneath it, the real need: to be seen. "I see you" isn't just haelp's promise. It's my own journey.
"haelp is the dramaturgical midpoint — the threshold beyond which a character can act more freely."
15 — Truly free of caring
For the first time, I genuinely don't care what others think. For the first time, I'm not building haelp to prove something — but because it's what I want to do. The point where freedom begins.
16 — The societal dimension
haelp isn't a personal project — it responds to something structural. Loneliness, polarization, protectionism. The history of media from the printing press to AI as a story of accelerating speed and increasing isolation. The paradoxical observation: poorer societies trust the future more, because their social networks are still intact.
17 — Next steps
What comes next? A layered approach: first the conversation — this very evening — then a guided event with 5-15 strangers, then the app. Karla suggests a podcast format. And we talk about monetization — not as an end in itself, but as a condition for freedom.
18 — haelp as art
The final chapter: I realize that haelp isn't a design problem — it's an art project. Marina Abramovic: "The Artist is Present." Complete presence for a stranger as art. No predetermined outcome. The encounter completes the work.
My real goal: to have a life's theme that I can explore for as long as I live. Freedom over security.
What I take away
This conversation planted a seed. Not for a product or an app — for a life's theme. Something I can explore for as long as I live.
The container got rethought that night. haelp stopped being a startup idea and became what it actually is: a living lab for humanity. A place to run experiments in human connection — some small, some ambitious, some weird.
And this evening — this conversation — was already the first one.