It’s just a beautiful story: a 9-year-old creates a homemade arcade out of cardboard and invites the world to come play with him. Filmmaker Nirvan Mullick was thoroughly transfixed when he stumbled upon young entrepreneur Caine Monroy’s arcade, located in his father’s auto parts store, and made a short documentary about it. Mullick’s initial goal was to raise a $25,000 scholarship fund for Monroy.
Caine is now 10 and, in November, appeared at TEDxYouth@SantaMonica alongside Mullick. There Mullick revealed that his doc, Caine’s Arcade, got a million views and raised $60K on the very first day it was posted. In the Q&A above, the pair share how they decided to help other kids with the vast sums they were receiving by launching the Imagination Foundation. Their idea is to find, foster and fund creative entrepreneurship in kids through initiatives like the Cardboard Challenge.
In an amazing moment in the video above, Monroy shares the five rules he’s learned from his journey. Number 2: “Do a business that is fun.” And Number 5: “Use recycled stuff.”
