Caine Monroy was a young 9 year old boy with an incredible imagination. His father owned a used auto parts store in East Los Angeles that would be the site for Caine’s arcade. Caine spent months perfecting his arcade down to even creating shirts for his staff members. Caine didn’t get any customers for a while, but he never gave up. One day a man named Nirvan came buy and paid $2 for tickets in Caine’s arcade. Nirvan was also a filmmaker and ended up coming back to film the arcade with a mob of people to surprise Caine. This video went viral and Caine’s arcade went worldwide. Nirvan set up a scholarship for Caine as part of the film and ended up raising over $240,000. Tens-of-thousands of people from all over the world visited Caine’s arcade after the film went viral. Caine began to speak in front of business schools all over the world. Caine has spoken on TEDxTeen by himself, TEDx with Nirvan and has even been invited to the white house! Although this may not be the usual entrepreneur story, it is very inspiring. Caine used his hard work and motivation to create something incredible out of cardboard boxes. Even though he had no customers until Nirvan came in, he never gave up. He has now inspired kids all around the world to stop watching TV and to use their imaginations and create something.
This is such a cute story! Caine was so determined and it all eventually paid off. This shows the power of the internet and Facebook. No one even knew about Caine’s arcade until Nirvan planned the event for him through Facebook. His tiny business became a hit through the web.