Julián Quijano, entrepreneur and alumnus of the bachelor’s degree in Advertising and Public Relations of the Department of Communication at UPF, has been selected for the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list in the field of video games. The list, released by Forbes, distinguishes successful and influential persons under 30 years of age in different sectors. He has been recognized for the narrative value of Monster Prom, the game that sold 100,000 copies in less than two months, of the company Beautiful Glitch, of which Quijano is the founder and creative director.

- What does it mean to you to be one of the thirty young talents in the video games industry according to Forbes?

Appearing in the list is most gratifying: to see all the hard work of the past two years acknowledged by such a highly-rated publication. If you had told me four years ago that I would appear in Forbes, I never would have believed it.

- What was going from studying Advertising and Public Relations to video games like? When did you realize you wanted to make this change?

Well, I’ve always liked video games, though they are not my greatest passion by a long way. I think I have many interests, and I simply let myself be taken by them. It just happened that at one point in my life when I was professionally lacking direction, I was offered a job handling the communication of an independent video games studio. I worked there for a year, learning the underlying industry systems and processes.

“I would even go as far as saying that part of our success has come from knowing how to adapt this previous knowledge in an industry where independent companies do not always know how to work their brand and their communication”

After this stage, I had saved some money and had always dreamed of starting my own business. It’s just that the stars came into alignment. I always say that if the job that came up at that time had been handling the communication of a company from another industry, I would have started up my own business anyway, just in something else. On the bachelor’s degree in Advertising and Public Relations I learned to deconstruct and analyse the systems of brands and companies... and in the end that’s what I ended up doing, somehow. I would even go as far as saying that part of our success has come from knowing how to adapt this previous knowledge in an industry where independent companies do not always know how to work their brand and their communication.

- Where did your entrepreneurial spirit come from?

Well, it obviously came from a mixture of reasons. One is purely contextual: I am an immigrant, my parents are immigrants, and my great-grandparents are immigrants. I think there is a culture around immigration (or at least there has been in my case throughout the generations) that promotes the idea of going into business: you suddenly change your environment, often enjoying little support, and you are forced to start from scratch, to forge your own way. That’s why I believe that many immigrants have the possibility of do something for themselves more ingrained in them. I am not talking about setting up a video games company, perhaps; but running a restaurant, or having a family business. Many of my ancestors came to Argentina from Eastern Europe and had to look for ways to survive. The same thing happened when my parents arrived in Spain, who have been partners as well as a couple since they were twenty years old.

So, at home, entrepreneurship in general and my parents’ business (a small fashion accessories company) in particular have been around me for as long as I can recall. Moreover, since I was a kid, I have always liked creating; first through drawing, then writing, and finally, through the idea of business. Mixing the two situations, it was a matter of time before I tried setting up a business based on creativity.

“I think there is a culture around immigration (or at least there has been in my case throughout the generations) that promotes the idea of going into business: you suddenly change your environment, often enjoying little support, and you are forced to start from scratch, to forge your own way”

- How did Monster Prom arise? Was it your first project?

As I said before, the genesis came at the end of my time at the independent video games company and having acquired a series of knowledge and resources that gave me some confidence to go into business. I dived in at the deep end and it has turned out well. I decided that Monster Prom would be our first project because it seemed the best option according to my three basic criteria: creativity, feasibility, and strategy. I set up the company mainly to be able to produce the game.

“I decided that Monster Prom would be our first project because it seemed the best option according to my three basic criteria: creativity, feasibility, and strategy”

- Wild Youth is another one of your creations, a business initiative in creative communication. Tell us what it’s about.

During my last years of studies, I started to move a lot outside the university. I realized that this process was terribly rewarding and a highly recommendable complement to pair with my studies. I took part in advertising creativity competitions and worked as a freelance alongside a classmate. The two activities taught me a lot and provided me with great professional perspective. I wanted to share this discovery with my colleagues and I saw that a lot of them rejected the opportunity on the grounds that they didn’t have time or it seemed complicated to them.

When I saw that, I began to create a variety of resources to facilitate this kind of activities, and so, little by little, Wild Youth was born. It is a creative platform that seeks to offer different resources and services for young people with a creative profile to be able to explore their potential beyond studying: from a list of competitions and a summary of their rules, to links with companies to share job offers and connect creative talent. Today it is hardly operative because it is difficult to combine with my other tasks, and anyway I never designed it to make a profit. But it makes me happy to know that Wild Youth helped many young people in its time.

- What do you think is the key to business success? What recommendation would you give to someone who asks you?

Entrepreneurship is wonderful, and it requires (in my opinion) knowing how to mix two very different ways of thinking: having a very strategic and realistic perspective, but at the same time being able to go further, to provide differential value over the competition. I see a lot of creative people fail because they do not want to see that no matter how original what they are doing is, it will always require a touch of strategy. I have heard people justify themselves by saying that accepting the more “entrepreneurial” aspect of “entrepreneurship” would be “selling”. For me they are cheap excuses, displaying arrogance, laziness or cowardice. A creative person who wants success in business of any kind for their work (not necessarily financial), must know how to see how what they are doing interacts with the market. And doing so does not ruin the creative integrity of the project, but it forces the creative to challenge their views, often improving the result. Conditioning ourselves during a creative process –far from making barriers- often stimulates.

“If you are constantly moving and always perceptive of any opportunity, you will eventually find more and take advantage of a greater number of opportunities”

And moving, moving a lot. People complain about not having opportunities (I would remark that a bad habit is always making excuses and complaining about what we cannot control rather than wanting to do our best at what we can control). I’m not saying it is not true that some people have more opportunities than others; but it is not about comparing yourself. If you are constantly moving and always perceptive of any opportunity, you will eventually find more and take advantage of a greater number of opportunities.

- What has Pompeu Fabra University provided you with along the way?

A great deal. Besides being a pleasant and uplifting experience both educationally and socially, it helped me to organize my way of thinking. It is also true that today I either directly or indirectly apply what I learned from many subjects I did during my studies. I would take advantage of this opportunity to defend with pride the speciality I took, which perhaps because it was the “least sexy” is often the least popular among students: “analysis”. Sure, the other three specialties are rather clearer and appeal to interests that probably led students to choose a career in: “creativity”, “strategy” and “public relations”. There’s nothing wrong with them (I also did “strategy” and liked it); but it is a shame to see how “analysis” goes unnoticed.

I understand that at first glance this speciality seems the most outlandish, and yet I think its content is potentially the most useful as it is the most universal. The speciality in Analysis included a large content of semiotics which has ultimately allowed me to understand it all (from a novel to a company, through a video game) as a set of systems. When you understand that, it is easier to deconstruct, analyse and reuse, which, in the end, is a most important process to succeed in many areas.

“I would take advantage of this opportunity to defend with pride the speciality I took, which perhaps because it was the “least sexy” is often the least popular among students: “analysis””.

 - What do you think about the fact that eSports have been promoted at the university with the creation of @PhoenixesUPF and its participation in gaming leagues such as LOL, Overwatch or Clash Royale?

I think it is always good for the university to promote all kinds of extracurricular activities, in that it offers more ways for students to enrich their experience, while also uniting them in university life. In the specific case of eSports, is interesting because it is unquestionably a discipline that is growing in leaps and bounds and will be talked about in the coming years. It is good to see that the university is receptive to these changes and tries to adapt.

- If you had to choose a bachelor’s degree again, would you choose Advertising and Public Relations?

Probably. I really enjoyed the studies. If I’m honest, I wouldn’t say 100%, in the same way that I wasn’t entirely sure when I first chose my studies. My second option was Slavic Studies (because I’ve always loved Russian literature), but today I think it no longer exists, so I guess it would have to be Literary Studies. And then there are other studies that interested me and I will always ask myself what my life would have been like if I had taken them (such as Mathematics or Linguistics).

- You said that you are very busy these days with new projects. Can you give us a teaser?

During the first months of 2019 we were finishing developing our first DLC (an expansion of “Monster Prom” which is sold separately at a reduced price). We launched it for Valentine’s Day, and the truth is that it has been a success. Now we are about to travel to the US because we are finalists in a couple of categories of the SXSW Gaming Awards. When we get back, the plan is to get to grips with the sequel, for which we prepared a Kickstarter (creative project crowdfunding platform) that will come out in May this year. And then, a load of opportunities that are coming up and we are studying how to take advantage of them without losing our focus.

- When you are not working, what do you like to do?

I like watching series, eating out, reading and partying. I think life is to enjoy it and I always try to prevent any kind of stress from depriving me of these little pleasures.