Boy Became a Millionaire After Inventing a Popular Card Game at Age 7. Now He Has Big Plans for the Future
- - Boy Became a Millionaire After Inventing a Popular Card Game at Age 7. Now He Has Big Plans for the Future
Toria SheffieldAugust 9, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Hot Taco
Alex Butler, at age 9, with his parents, Leslie Pierson and Mark Butler
Alex Butler, now 15, created the popular card game Taco vs Burrito when he was just 7 years old
The Seattle-based teen and his parents recently sold the game for over a million dollars to a large gaming company
The kid-friendly strategy game is based on creating the “weirdest and wildest” meal possible with your cards
A teen from Seattle is now a millionaire after inventing a card game when he was barely out of kindergarten.
Alex Butler, now 15, came up with the game Taco vs Burrito when he was 7 years old. His mom, Leslie Pierson, told Geek Wire that he was inspired while going on family walks.
Leslie, a career entrepreneur who has appeared on Shark Tank, told the outlet that she initially thought her conversations with her son would be more educational and theoretical.
“I really did think it was just gonna be a chat about how a product gets made,” she told Geek Wire.
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Amazon
Taco vs. Burrito
However, six months later, they were still discussing and refining the game. This ultimately led to Leslie and Alex’s dad, Mark Butler, establishing a Kickstarter to help get the game off the ground.
Leslie and Mark then formally established a business to begin manufacturing the game — and they made Alex the majority shareholder, per The Seattle Times. They began by selling it independently on Amazon, where it sold out in a week and soon became one of the top-ranked games on the site.
Taco vs Burrito — which has sold 1.5 million copies on Amazon — is based on the premise of creating the “weirdest and wildest” meal possible using a variety of gameplay cards, including wild cards like “Food Fight,” “Tummy Ache,” and “Trash Panda,” per the game’s official website.
The game is intended for 2 to 4 players, ages 6 and up, and a round takes about 10 minutes.
After over half a decade of overseeing the manufacturing and distribution of the game themselves, the family was ready to take a step back. They decided to sell the company to the Wisconsin-based company PlayMonster in a full buyout. The exact details of the sale have not been released.
And how did Alex feel about the sale of his brainchild? It was seemingly all part of his plan.
“It was never something that I’ve been attached to or anything. It’s not super important to me. I just kind of wanted to get the most money out of it,” Alex told The Seattle Times.
“It was never something I wanted to do later in life,” he added.
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Alex — who is interested in sports, music production and video games — is currently working with his parents to invest the money made from the sale — though he jokingly told Leslie and Mark that he plans to buy a Lamborghini, Leslie told PEOPLE.
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Source: “AOL AOL Lifestyle”
