It was well past midnight when 12-year-old Felix M. Schlegel found himself hunched over his laptop, eyes fixed on the lines of code scrolling up his screen. He was fine-tuning a web application that brought the old-fashioned piggy bank into the digital age—an online platform where friends and family could pool funds through PayPal instead of fumbling with spare coins. "He's always been driven to make everyday tasks more efficient through technology," says his longtime friend and programming partner, Marvin von Hagen. The two first crossed paths in middle school, forging a bond over code sprints and hackathon victories rather than playground games.
Schlegel's curiosity did not remain confined to his bedroom. By the age of 14, he was entering university-level programming contests across Germany. One standout moment came at Jugend Hackt, Berlin's premier hackathon for young coders, where Schlegel introduced a prototype for "smart shoes." With vibrating sensors embedded in the soles, the device delivered turn-by-turn navigation without the need to stare at a phone. "I wanted to free people from having to stare at their phones so they could focus on the world around them," he explains.
