On a hot LA summer day in 2012, nine-year-old Caine started working at his father’s used auto parts store. While working there, Caine noticed that there were a lot of empty boxes in the back room that weren’t being used. He decided that it would be fun to make arcade games out of them. He set up the games in his father’s shop and began charging people a nickel to play them. He used his old toys, which were mostly hot wheels, and some toys that he bought at the dollar store.

Caine used arcade tickets that came out of a ticket slot- just like a real arcade. His business grew and eventually, it took up the whole store. Caine’s pricing system was simple. He said, “For one dollar, you get four turns. For two dollars, you get a fun pass. A fun pass gives you 500 turns.”

Because his father’s shop is located on an industrial street, initially Caine didn’t have any customers. Then on one fateful day, Nirvan Mullick visited the auto parts shop to buy a new door handle for his car. He met Caine and decided to try out his arcade. He bought a fun pass. He was impressed that Caine made his own games with simple materials that he found around the shop. For example, Caine was able to make a claw machine using just a string and a hook. Though Caine hadn’t had a single customer before Mullick, he didn’t give up. He kept making games and looking for new ways to improve the arcade.

A few weeks after playing, Mullick came back and asked if he could make a documentary on Caine’s arcade. To bring in some more customers, Mullick advertised a flash mob at Caine’s Arcade on Facebook. The page went viral, gaining over 23,000 fans. It continued to grow and ended up making the front page of Reddit. On the day of the event, NBC news showed up, along with a whole crowd of people, all calling out “We came to play.”

After the documentary was released, Caine had the arcade open every Saturday for all his new customers. Though Caine later decided to retire from the arcade when he turned 11, his arcade was not forgotten. Mullick created a college fund for Caine, and viewers raised $240,000. Caine’s idea inspired Mullick to start the Imagination Foundation, which is a non-profit organization that worked to inspire innovation in kids. It hosted the cardboard challenge, which inspired 100 schools in 9 different countries to make their own cardboard arcades.

Caine ended up starting a bicycle shop where he repaired and remade new bikes. He now has a college fund and was offered a full scholarship at Colorado State University after speaking at the Colorado Innovation Network Summit. In whatever Caine decides to do next, he can look back at his first success, one summer, some cardboard boxes, and a fun idea to make something of it.