A US boy turned entrepreneur at the mere age of 7, and is now cashing in on his millionaire status even before graduating high school. Alex Butler of Seattle created a simple card game, without ever imagining what the future held for him. Years down the line, as a teenager, the young boy is already making grand sums of money many adults can only dream of.
At just 7, Butler’s game-inventing inspiration was sparked doing what most kids at that age do: playing card games. Despite the young entrepreneur’s unconventional professional journey during his childhood, his parents, Leslie Pierson and Mark Butler, didn’t witness anything out of the ordinary as they always found him experimenting imaginatively one way or another, according to the Seattle Times.
The game in question – ‘Taco vs Burrito’ – bearing the banner “Created by a Kid! (Alex Age 7)” is now Amazon’s No 1 bestselling game. It had already helped Alex’s family make approximately $1.1 million by 2018. Butler is back in the news years after creating a life-changing card game because he sold Taco vs Burrito to a Wisconsin-based company called PlayMonster last month.
How a 7-year-old US boy’s card game invention made him a millionaire?
The teen millionaire’s mother, Leslie Pierson, who calls herself a “serial entrepreneur” and even came out on Shark Tank in 2016, helped Alex set a GoFundMe fundraiser online to cover the game’s production cost. While the young boy initially bet that they must have made $200 on the first day of its launch, the shocking number had actually already hit over $1,000.
Over the course of the fundraiser period, the family even ended up promoting Taco vs Burrito at Seattle’s Comic Con. That, plus the online fundraiser, brought the sum as high as $25,000. Things got even crazier next as the game inventor’s father, Mark Butler, created their business banner – Hot Taco Inc.
While the value of last month’s deal with PlayMonster has not been outed, Alex owned the majority share of the Hot Taco Inc company until the toy company bought Taco vs Burrito. The Butler family went with the big brand after putting $25,000 to $30,000 worth of the product on Amazon.
1.5 billion copies of the game have since been sold on the online marketplace like hot cakes. Seeing how the whole thing had bigger than them, PlayMonster became their go-to buyer despite several other offers, thanks to their treatment of Alex as an “adult.”
PlayMonster CEO Jonathan Berkowitz, who was shocked to find out that a 7-year-old was the game’s creator, praised its characters, adding, “It’s always fun when kids can beat their parents in a game, but the parents can still truly enjoy playing.”
What’s next for the Amazon bestseller?
The game is on track for an expansion with new extensions and markets in play. November onwards, the game manufacturer will introduce a new version in a collectors’ tin, according to the Seattle Times. However, Alex Butler has plans of his own.
One would think that building such a game-changing invention, which is now an Amazon bestseller, Butler would be keen on branching out to a whole game empire. On the contrary, Alex’s family are now focussed on how to invest the money they’ve earned so far. The first thing on the 15-year-old’s min is to buy “a Lambo.”
The Seattle teen boy is also likely to shift his focus to music production, sports and video games, which he says he is fond of. Butler neither wants to stick to the game business nor does he hope to land in a traditional job. Well, he’s just 15, so he’s got all the time he needs to figure out what comes next.
When talking about the game, the now-15-year-old downplayed its role, saying “it’s not super important” to him. Nonetheless, he always “wanted to get the most money out of it.” And now, he has.