In August 2013, programmer Patrick McConlogue offered homeless man Leo Grand a choice: $100 in cash, or two months' worth of coding lessons.

Grand opted for the lessons, and embarked on a quest to to create a mobile app of his own. The enterprise had its own share of detractors; McConlogue was criticized for treating homelessness as a "startup experiment," although the duo quickly gained national fame and went on to appear on several television shows to talk about their project.

Several months after picking up his first coding books, Grand launched Trees for Cars, a mobile carpooling app. "I can work at Google, I can work at SpaceX," he said minutes after successfully launching the app. "This will change my life in a magnificent way."

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But a year-and-a-half later, Grand still lives on the same back alleys where he and McConlogue first met. Although he rents a storage unit, Grand occasionally keeps a shopping cart full of his possessions by a pile of sandbags near the Chelsea Piers in New York City. He no longer codes every day; Trees for Cars has long since disappeared from app stores, since he does not want to pay for server space for its upkeep. He occasionally takes on odd jobs as a welder, and whiles away time by walking around the High Line public park.

Once in a while, people who recognize him stop to ask why he still lives on the streets. Grand is cagey about answering the question; he insists he simply enjoys living outdoors as an "eco-friendly" man, although he says that once he creates a second, more lucrative app, he plans to move to a luxury apartment complex.

"I know it sounds like there's no way in hell, but it's very possible," he says. "People have seen me on TV, so they know I'm capable of something rather great...I've learned this: When people are negative, you have to keep your head in the clouds. You just have to somehow stay focused on the things that matter to you."

But his dreams for the future don't prevent him from occasionally pondering the months after he launched his app. Bolstered by the support of thousands of followers, Trees for Cars shot to the top of the charts on the App Store and Google Play. He claims to have made between $10,000 and $15,000 from the app, which sold for $0.99 per download. CNN and Today invited him to be on camera.

"Oh man, being on NBC," he says. "We got to stay in a nice hotel at Rockefeller Plaza. A nice, swanky hotel. We got the red carpet rolled out in front of us! That was the highlight of my year.

"People were loving me everywhere. I was getting free coffee from restaurants," he adds.

But now, Grand is a former Internet celebrity living on the last dregs of his fame. The money he earned from Trees for Cars is spent to fund his storage unit and provide for his everyday needs, and he hasn't been able to spend much time on programming. When asked why, he stammers, "Because you know, life, you know. Things going on. You have to do this, you have to do that."

Although Grand plans to bounce back someday with what he promises will be a more successful app, in a way he has come to accept the downfalls of his brief brush with fame.

"You're hot one minute, you're gone the next," he says.

BONUS: The real story of the homeless coder