Among all these feel-good stories, how about one with a bit different ending?
During my masters, I created a ML library that dealt with noise in dataset [1]. I implemented bunch of papers, but unlike your usual research code, I spent a long time obsessing about it's API, performance, created documentation, CI- the whole shebang. But then, like avg research code, I moved on and promptly forgot about it.
One day about a year ago the cofounder of a very new, small startup working on something similar texted me about the project on linkedin. We chatted for a bit, but as a guy who thinks he's too cool for linkedin, I next logged in and saw his last message about wanting to collaborate about 3/4 months after the fact.
Well they raised $25 million dollars a few months ago :(