Conzuelo had it all: she was a manager at McKinsey, had just bought an apartment, and was about to get married.
She decided it was time to become an entrepreneur, left her stable career behind, and invested all her savings with a trusted business partner.
Days later, she discovered the company was bankrupt, and her partner had vanished. She experienced corporate ghosting: he blocked her from company emails and disappeared with her $60,000. In just one week, she was left without a job, a company, and savings.
This is a story about resilience and determination. How do you recover when everything seems lost?
Keep reading to discover her story...
👤 Who
Conzuelo Pi hasn't just built companies, she has survived them. She is an engineer and philosopher, a former McKinsey consultant, investor, and mentor at Startup Chile. She is also the founder of WHO&Co and A Place For Us. Today, she is one of the most influential voices in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, a LinkedIn Top Voice, and serves on the boards of multiple organizations.
FuN: What is your personal definition of failure?
Conzuelo: Failure, to me, is an inevitable part of the human experience. No one can truly live a full life without failing at some point.
We've learned to demonize failure and see it as something bad when in reality, it is simply a fact of life, not a moral category. It's like emotions: there are no good or bad emotions, only emotions that provide us with information.
Failure works the same way. It reveals our limits, our biases, what we need to learn, and often, the path we need to change.
FuN: What was your life like before this story?
Conzuelo: By the age of seven, I already knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I remember approaching my grandfather, Don Ervin, who had built several companies and gone bankrupt more than once. He told me something very harsh, but incredibly clarifying:
“You can either be a great mother or a great entrepreneur, because nothing meaningful is built with the time you have left over.”
It was difficult to process, but that clarity helped me understand that I wanted to pursue a corporate career while eventually building something of my own.
I studied engineering, did well, and spent more than ten years in consulting. I joined McKinsey and advanced quickly. I had always set myself the goal of becoming a manager before turning 30, and I achieved it.
Everything seemed to be in order, but I knew that sooner or later, the time would come to strike out on my own. That year, I felt it was my moment because I had just bought my first apartment and my now-husband had proposed to me.
Remembering my grandfather's words, I decided to leave my corporate stability behind and become an entrepreneur.
💣 The real screw-up
Conzuelo: I partnered with someone I trusted deeply because we had already been working together, knew each other through the industry, and shared projects. He was the one who believed in me and invited me to become his partner. Honestly, out of fear, I probably wouldn't have started a business on my own.
There's never a perfect time to become an entrepreneur, but the week of Chile's social uprising in October 2019 was definitely the worst possible timing.
When I officially joined as a partner and requested the company's financial statements, I discovered we only had six months left before the business would run out of money. By April of the following year, the company would be dead.
My partner not only hid this from me; he disappeared. I experienced what I call corporate ghosting: he stopped answering calls and WhatsApp messages and removed me from the company email system.
He also took my $60,000 in working capital, which represented all of my savings.
At the time, I was a mentor at Startup Chile, helping entrepreneurs understand where mistakes are usually made. Yet despite having all the theoretical knowledge, I had failed on every single item on that list.
I went from earning an excellent salary in September to, by October, having no job, no company, no partner, and no money.
FuN: How did you deal with that news?
Conzuelo: I felt deeply ashamed. I had never lost money in a business before. I had always considered myself professionally successful, and for a long time, I felt that this loss said something about who I was. It was hard to tell my husband that I had lost all of my savings; it was a very difficult conversation.
Over time, I realized I was mixing two different things. One was my ability to do business, and the other was entering into a partnership where I was new, lacked complete information, and was dealing with behaviors beyond my control.
I also realized that I had chosen to build a company with someone whose values were fundamentally incompatible with mine.
That shift in perspective was incredibly liberating. I stopped blaming myself for things that had never been under my control and moved beyond the victim mindset that had kept me trapped in constant frustration for months. Only then did I regain the ability to ask myself a different question: "What can I do now?" And that question marked the true beginning of rebuilding my life.
FuN: Things couldn't possibly get worse, right?
Conzuelo: In January 2020, my husband called me to tell me he had just been laid off. We had only recently bought our apartment, and suddenly, he had no income.
Then, in March 2020, the pandemic arrived. I was working in employability, and within a short period of time, I had no capital, no partner, no brand, and no clients. I could barely cover basic expenses.
Yet that same year, McKinsey offered me the opportunity to return in a more senior role. A few months later, another company offered me the position of Head of Human Resources.
Any rational person would have accepted, especially considering that my husband was still unemployed and my venture was losing money. But despite the financial pressure, I chose to trust my intuition and turned down both offers.
Something inside me kept telling me to continue. And for me, intuition isn't a mystical concept; it's the ability to make decisions without relying solely on structured data.
FuN: How did you get out of that situation?
Conzuelo: Since we were all locked down in March 2020 and companies were laying people off, I decided to create an employability program through my HR consultancy to teach people how to find jobs.
We grew from a team of two people to seven. That program, originally called Career Advisory, is now being digitized under the name Career Hub and has helped more than 400 people find employment.
This product saved the company, protected my relationship, and gave us the psychological safety to keep growing. Today, our goal is to make it Chile's first employability SaaS platform.
💡 Conclusion
Conzuelo: “Read the Room Fast.”
💡 FUN: Effective leaders adapt to context. Paying attention to team dynamics, shifts in energy, and unspoken concerns leads to better decisions and stronger relationships.
Conzuelo: “Pivot Quickly.”
💡 FUN: Establish Establish feedback loops and clear decision-making processes that allow you to change course before small problems turn into major crises.
Conzuelo: “Build a Team That Compensates for Your Weaknesses.”
💡 FUN: High-performing teams are built on complementary strengths. Surround yourself with people who bring different perspectives and capabilities to reduce blind spots and improve decision-making.
Conzuelo: “Keep Developing Your Intuition and Confidence."”
💡 FUN: Leadership requires both data and judgment. Reflection, experience, and continuous learning strengthen intuition and enable more confident decision-making.
Connect with Conzuelo!
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