The idea he came up with – Evil Me – was driven by a simple question: What happens if it’s in a main character’s nature to be bad? As he developed the idea, he was also dealing with the creative and financial challenges of running his own company. “The money was running out, no jobs were coming in, none of our ideas had landed, we were essentially waiting to die,” Pablos says in the video.

But just when it seemed that everything would come crashing down, Evil Me found an unlikely champion in Chris Meledandri, who was looking for a film to launch his company, Illumination Entertainment. He bought the idea and reconfigured it into what has now become the highest-grossing animated feature franchise of all-time.

Pablos makes it clear that others were involved in developing the film after his pitch. The iconic Minions, for example, came later. Pablos even jokes in the video, “I’m not to blame for the Minions.”

Nevertheless, the seed of the mega-successful DM franchise is contained in his studio’s original pitch. It’s a reminder that billion-dollar ideas can come from anywhere nowadays, including a small independent animation studio in Spain, and that’s something worth celebrating.