The moment Rune Pollet saw his app come to life on screen, he knew he wasn’t just a kid playing with code anymore. He was a developer who had built something real.
Most teenagers scroll through TikTok mindlessly, but for Rune, one video changed everything. As he watched someone showcase their dream life: the incredible house, the sports cars, the freedom, something clicked. But to understand why that moment mattered so much, you have to know what came before.
Growing up, Rune was a kid who felt everything deeply. He loved dinosaurs, Lego, Star Wars, and most importantly, life itself. However, this intense appreciation came with a painful cost.
“I was constantly admiring life, but I began to miss all meaningful moments when they were over,” Rune explains. “I felt like I was losing precious moments to time, as they were in the past and I couldn’t go back in time to relive them.”
This constant sense of loss followed him everywhere, until something shifted during his secondary education. Through his friendship and shared dreams of owning sports cars, he discovered something powerful: the ability to look forward instead of only backward.
“For the first time in my life, I was dreaming,” he realized. “While missing my past, I was also looking forward to my future.”
The Moment That Started Everything
That’s when the TikTok video hit differently. Instead of just scrolling past, Rune stopped and thought: “Wait, I want to achieve my dream too, why don’t I just work for it?”
The idea was beautifully simple. If he could create something valuable that reached lots of people, he could build the freedom he craved. And what better way to reach people than through an app?
“I was inspired by apps like TikTok and Instagram who had billions of users,” Rune says. “So that was what I was going to do: I would create my own app with which I could reach many people and add value to their lives.”
At 14, with nothing but a MacBook Air and the free Swift Playgrounds app, Rune made himself a promise: he would code every single day, no matter what. That promise would carry him further than he ever imagined.
His Guide in the Coding Wilderness
After months of learning Swift basics through Playgrounds, Rune hit a wall. He knew some syntax, but building a real app felt impossible. That’s when he discovered CodeWithChris on YouTube.
“They explained everything very well for beginners and didn’t act like something was ‘common knowledge,’ which a lot of YouTube channels or other coding platforms do,” Rune remembers.
When he saw the 14-day beginner challenge that promised to teach him to build his own app, it felt like destiny. Here was exactly what he needed: a structured path from knowing nothing about Xcode to building something real.
“CodeWithChris felt as a safe spot on the internet,” he explains. “It was one of the only platforms that looked after beginners like me! The explanations are inclusive and the learning approach is perfect for learning to code from the start.”
But it was one particular piece of advice from Chris that resonated most deeply: you don’t have to memorize everything; you’ll learn it by repeatedly using it. For a teenager already overwhelmed by how much there was to learn, this was liberating.
The Lightbulb Moment
Every developer remembers their first real “aha” moment, and for Rune, it came in the form of completion blocks, one of iOS development’s trickier concepts for beginners.
He had written code to retrieve an image in a SwiftUI view, expecting it to work immediately. When the image didn’t appear, he spent days hunting for the bug, growing more frustrated by the hour.
“Eventually a moderator on the CodeCrew forum helped me explain what was happening,” Rune recalls. “That was my first ‘aha’-moment. I realized that a completion isn’t executed immediately, but only when it is called back—in my example, when the image at the URL has been retrieved.”
The feeling was electric. “It felt as if the code was making sense after all, and I was so happy that it made sense to me as well!”
From that moment forward, Rune understood his north star. No more copying and pasting code blindly. Everything had to make logical sense.
Building GoalPilot
A year and a half into his coding journey, Rune heard about Apple’s Swift Student Challenge. The timing felt perfect. He’d been learning not just to code, but about economics, investing, and self-improvement. All of this knowledge was building toward something, but what?
The answer came when he reflected on his own transformation. The most valuable thing he could share wasn’t just an app, it was the mindset that had changed his life.
“I learned that in order to achieve my dream, I must give, I must create value,” Rune explains. “The wealth you receive is directly proportional to the value you add.”
And so GoalPilot was born, an app designed to help others discover and pursue their dreams with the same systematic approach that had worked for him.
Related: Learn more about GoalPilot here.
The app guides users through defining their ultimate goals, breaks them down into manageable milestones, and provides ongoing motivation through gamification and beautiful animations. But at its heart, it’s about something deeper.
“Having a goal to reach for is one of the greatest sources of positive energy,” Rune says. “A goal serves as a direction in your life, something to hold on to which will never fade or leave you.”
Becoming a Developer
Building GoalPilot pushed Rune into new territory. One particular feature, animating curves that looked like rolling hills moving toward or away from the user, seemed impossible until he finally cracked it.
“I looked at the result and I was so incredibly happy that I had managed to pull it off,” he remembers. “When I read my code, it was so nice that it made sense to me. I could even explain it. I just let SwiftUI animate the numbers of the coordinates of the points that describe the curve, and while they change, the whole curve animates with it.”
At that moment, staring at his own elegant code solution, Rune realized he wasn’t just following tutorials anymore. He was thinking like a developer.
Victory and What’s Next
When Apple announced that Rune had won the Swift Student Challenge, it felt like validation of everything he’d believed about the power of persistence and dreams. More than that, it confirmed that his approach to life worked.
“Me winning the Swift Student Challenge means it could be a confirmation of this belief,” he reflects. “I like to think that I got where I am just because of this mindset, which is something anyone could learn.”
Now, as he prepares to study Applied Economics at university while continuing to develop his app, Rune’s vision extends far beyond just coding. He wants to build businesses that add value to as many people as possible, using his technical skills as tools for creating the freedom he’s always dreamed of.
Most importantly, he wants others to discover what he learned: that pursuing a dream, no matter how ambitious, can transform not just your future, but how you experience every single day.
“Simply put, pursuing a dream inspires happiness,” Rune says. “And that’s what I want for everyone in this world.”
Download GoalPilot via the App Store today or learn more about the app here!