As an entrepreneur and builder, AI has become more than a tool for me. Where I used to have a 100% human tech team, agent teams have now largely taken over the work. Until last year it was mostly vibe coding, now it’s vibe working.
The reflex is always the same: Where can AI deliver even more? More output, more efficiency, more speed.
And then… Do you know that moment when you sometimes ask yourself what it’s all for. Why higher, further, faster? Where is my journey going? When these moments catch me, it feels like two personalities live inside me.
As an entrepreneur, this energy flows through me, this curiosity to discover new things, the thrill of figuring out how they work, playing with them and using them in my everyday life. Since AI came along, I’ve felt freer as a builder than almost ever before. It’s almost like a rush.
And then there’s the quiet Johannes, who gently knocks from within and wants to tell me something. I notice it, sometimes more, sometimes less. But often it gets overwritten by everyday life. By all the ideas, projects, people, family, problems and challenges.
There was a time when this drivenness led me to burnout. It’s been almost a decade now. Searching for myself, I tried so many things. Psychologist, books, coaching, new hobbies, reconnecting with old friends. I learned that it wasn’t about fixing myself. It’s about feeling myself.
During this phase, I built myself a meditation timer (breathe) and put it on the App Store. Without any marketing, breathe had 100 downloads per day from day one, more and more users and feedback. At that point I still had checkdomain and had just come out of burnout. Another project? Even more responsibility? My decision was to let it run and not worry about it. That was 2016.
In the middle of last year, that moment caught me when I asked myself: What actually happened to the breathe app? I opened the app and what did I see? An app that had become a technical mess. Misaligned buttons, hidden navigation, things that were barely clickable.
I couldn’t believe it. How can an app that’s completely broken keep collecting more and more positive ratings over the years?
4.7 ★ on the App Store · 813 ratings · 1.5 million completed meditations
I looked at what had become of the other meditation apps. Headspace now has over 200 million users, Calm is a billion-dollar company. They’ve mutated into massive content platforms and feel like Netflix for meditation.
My realization: Most people don’t want a meditation Netflix to relax. Just breathe for a moment. Two minutes in the morning, a small ritual before a meeting and a short session before falling asleep. No program, no course and no content overload.
So I completely rebuilt breathe over the last three months. What emerged is an app for pausing a few minutes each day. Meditate or breathe.
The result is almost ironic: The world’s most advanced technology helped me build a product that helps people be offline for a few minutes a day.
It went live last week. Again without marketing and without a launch campaign. Headspace and Calm have invested millions in marketing.
After one week: 233 DAU at peak, nearly 2,000 sessions. Without spending a single dollar on ads.
Maybe breathe was never built for others. Maybe it was always for the quiet Johannes. And apparently there are a lot of them right now.
breathe is now available on the App Store and Google Play.