Building a business from nothing is like planting a seed in unfamiliar soil, unsure if it will take root.
You nurture it with hope, battling harsh weather and unpredictable seasons, not knowing if the growth will come slow or fast—or if it will come at all.
As the seed begins to sprout, you adapt, learning to prune when necessary and stretch when opportunity shines.
But just when it seems to flourish, an unexpected storm arrives, threatening to uproot everything.
Yet, even in the face of collapse, you realise that the real growth was in learning to thrive amidst uncertainty, and that every season has taught you something new.
Taking the Leap: Moving to Madrid Without a Safety Net
In 2000, I found myself on a one-way flight to Madrid with no job and little idea of what was next.
I had moved there to be with my partner, leaving behind my established career in the games industry in London.
It wasn’t an easy decision—I couldn’t speak Spanish, and securing work from abroad had been impossible.
But I was determined to continue doing what I loved: making games. Arriving in Madrid was a leap into the unknown.
With no connections in the industry and no command of the language, I knew the odds weren’t exactly in my favour.
But my passion for games never wavered.
I started going to technology trade fairs and meetups, searching for a way to stay in the industry that had been my career up until that point.
That’s when I connected with Ebrain Mobile. They offered me my first project—a chance to design and develop mobile games for them—and from there, Typhon Mobile was born.
Navigating the Unknown: Building a Business from Scratch
I started small, working out of my apartment.
At that time, the technical constraints were enormous. Mobile games had to fit into 128kb, which was a limitation I never could have imagined when working on console and PC games back in the 90s.
But as challenging as those restrictions were, they also forced us to focus on what really mattered: making games that were fun to play.
There was no room for bloated code or unnecessary features; everything had to serve the core experience. In many ways, it was an exercise in simplicity and precision.
Building the company came with its own set of challenges.
I had never run a business before, and hiring the right people was something I had to learn on the job.
Back then, LinkedIn wasn’t a resource for finding talent, so I posted job ads on local Spanish recruitment sites and gaming forums.
Finding the right programmers wasn’t just about skill—it was about finding people whose personalities fit with the way we worked.
It took time, but soon I had assembled a team that understood the demands of mobile game development, and we were able to start taking on bigger projects.
Scaling New Heights: From Bedroom Office to International Clients
One of our early breakthroughs came with IP Sistemas (which later became Sun Microsystems).
It was a much larger deal than we’d handled before and required scaling up—moving out of my bedroom and into an office, hiring more programmers, artists, and QA staff, and even outsourcing sound engineering.
It was the first time Typhon Mobile really started to feel like a proper studio. From there, the momentum kept building.
Over the next few years, we secured clients like Electronic Arts, Taito, and Endemol, among others.
Before I knew it, we had developed over 100 mobile games for clients across the globe.
Our focus was always on delivering quality, and that’s what kept clients coming back.
The games we made were small in size but big on fun, and that’s what mattered most to our clients.
In fact, the success of our games earned us recognition and awards in the gaming press, which was both a validation of the hard work we were putting in and a testament to the talent of the team.
A Storm on the Horizon: The iPhone Revolution and Financial Crisis
But as with all industries, the landscape began to shift. The arrival of the iPhone in 2007 signalled the start of a new era for mobile gaming.
Suddenly, the traditional distribution model—where telecom operators controlled which games made it onto their networks—was being replaced by app stores, and our market was changing faster than we could have anticipated.
At the same time, the global financial crisis in 2008 hit Spain hard, and clients who had signed multi-year deals started pulling out within months.
Some of them simply couldn’t pay what they owed. Others went out of business entirely.
In the span of a few months, everything we had built was at risk. I remember how quickly it all seemed to unravel.
Contracts dried up, cash flow became a real problem, and clients who had once been reliable simply disappeared.
It was like watching a wave you’d been riding for years suddenly break, leaving you to figure out how to stay afloat.
Looking back, I see now where I could have acted sooner—pivoted the business model, reduced the headcount, and found new ways to keep us going.
But at the time, it felt like everything was happening too fast to control.
Endings and New Beginnings: Lessons from Typhon Mobile’s Closure
Typhon Mobile had been a thriving business for nearly a decade, but in the end, we couldn’t survive the perfect storm of market shifts and economic collapse.
I had to make the tough decision to wind the company down, and while it was incredibly difficult, it was also a time of reflection.
I realised there were lessons in every aspect of that journey, from the thrill of landing our first deal to the challenges of scaling up and, ultimately, navigating the end of the business.
The experience of running Typhon Mobile shaped me in ways I hadn’t anticipated.
I learned not just about making games, but about leadership, decision-making, and the importance of staying adaptable in an industry that never stops evolving.
Creating over 100 games during those years was an incredible achievement, and I’m proud of what we accomplished as a team.
But the real lesson was that success in business—and in life—isn’t just about growth. It’s about resilience.
It’s about knowing when to change course and understanding that sometimes, things fall apart so that you can learn and grow from the experience.
Today, I look back on that time with a mix of nostalgia and gratitude.
Typhon Mobile may no longer exist, but the memories and lessons from those years continue to guide me.
At its core, it was a company born out of passion, and that passion is what keeps driving me forward, no matter what comes next.