From Snacks to Startups

Lessons from leaving consumer goods for code, teams and transformation.

My MBA journey, like it has for many, began with a single, stubborn intention: I wasn’t going back to the same corporate job I had before, even if it came with a shiny promotion and a bigger paycheck.

I’d love to tell you I knew exactly what I wanted instead. But the truth is, I was just hoping for a savvy, strategic pivot — something that would earn me some street cred at HBS and, ideally, back home as well.

With no clear direction, my RC year turned into a full-on exploration phase. And boy, did I explore. I went to every consulting dinner, sat through investment banking panels, grabbed coffee with private equity professionals, and threw myself headfirst into ETA. For someone with what I considered a pretty unorthodox background — sales management across nine cities for PepsiCo — it all sounded incredibly glamorous. Big money. Fancy offices in New York and London. Career paths that came with prestige and polish. It was a far cry from field ops in Colorado.

By winter break, I found myself knee-deep in consulting prep, convinced that helping global companies optimize their value creation was the path for me (at least, that’s what I thought consultants did). I made it through the four-stage interview process and landed the internship. But right after, I had this quiet moment of doubt. So I texted the president of the Management Consulting Club and asked: “What did you hate most about the job?”

His reply: “You do a ton of work, send it in, and someone replies telling you to change the font.”

And just like that, I knew: I would not survive in consulting.

I’ve always seen myself as a bit of a self-proclaimed rebel, and the idea of reporting to someone who cared that much about typography made me gag. Still, it was only January. I turned the internship down with a bit of too much self-confidence. I figured the right internship would eventually come along. But by late April, I was jobless — and officially panicking. Summer was looming, and I had no idea where I was supposed to be, let alone who I was becoming. 

Two Wednesdays before the FIELD trip, my TEM professor invited six of us to a casual “whiskey night” for some small talk. As we went around the table, everyone shared the impressive summer gig they had lined up. I watched, nodding, smiling, dreading my turn.

Then it was my turn.

I had no clever deflection, no fake-it-til-you-make-it moment in me. So I just said it: “I have no idea what I’m doing this summer.”

Cue the silence. A few awkward sips. Some sympathetic nods. Definitely a judgment call or two. Then my professor, ever the optimist, leaned in and asked: “Well… what would you like to do?”

That’s when instinct hijacked my brain. No filter, no plan — just a stream-of-consciousness confession: “I want to learn more about AI.”

Now keep in mind, this was not the ChatGPT era we’re living in now. Back then, in our RC year, AI wasn’t something we were using for research or productivity. It was mostly a novelty. We played with it to write dumb jokes or fix grammar. So when I said I wanted to learn about AI, it wasn’t because I had some genius master plan. I was just genuinely curious — and maybe a little desperate.

A few days later, I got an unexpected email from that same professor: “If you want to learn about AI, why don’t you consider joining an AI startup? They’re hiring.”

I interviewed within the week. Before I could really understand what was happening, I was Foundry AI’s newest MBA intern. No tech background. No startup experience. Just a girl from sales with a genuine curiosity about what I could learn. I had to get to work.

That summer, I realized I really loved what I was doing. I loved the chaos — wearing ten thousand hats, showing up to work in yoga pants, no set schedule, and complete freedom over my deliverable’s font. High-level brainstorming. Tangents about the future of artificial intelligence. But more than anything, I loved that the job pushed me to learn about something I would’ve been doom-scrolling about late at night anyway.

Most days, I tinkered with tools, learned the language, and listened in as AI experts dropped by to share their visions of the future. One guest, in particular, left me reeling. Over lunch, he described building a platform where AI agents work like an entire company — generating teams, debating strategies, and executing solutions without human help. A one-person billion-dollar company, he said, wasn’t just possible. It was inevitable. The idea was wild, but the conviction in his voice — and the prototype he showed me — made it hard to dismiss. That conversation sent me spiraling into the question I’m still chasing today: where does AI stop, and where do humans begin? The entirety of my EC first semester rested on my ability to answer that question. 

When we came back to school in the fall, I was the one teaching engineers how to prompt and create custom GPTs. But by then, I had something deeper: a clearer sense of purpose and a sharper view of where I wanted to go post-HBS. I was pivoting, from selling packaged snacks and managing truck logistics, to chasing a deeply theoretical, highly personal question about the intersection of human ingenuity and artificial intelligence.

Pretty quickly, that quest led me to MIT. I joined the Media Lab’s AI Venture Studio as a founder, determined to be at the forefront of the technology and undeterred by my non-technical background. If DeepMind wasn’t going to hire me, I figured I’d just build my own version of Gemini instead.

Fast forward to today, I am grateful to have investors who are highly interested in backing the vision. I’ve found brilliant technical partners, and we’ve built a working prototype of a truly remarkable agentic system. We are currently in conversations about pilot programs with major institutions, and, ironically enough, might just be building the platform that replaces the consultant I once thought I’d become.

Looking back, there are a few lessons I wish I had embraced earlier in this journey.

First, please, for the love of God, stop following the crowd. Nobody becomes extraordinary by walking the same well-lit path everyone else is on. The “right” background, the perfect job title, the impressive-sounding location — it’s all smoke and mirrors. Don’t come to HBS just to get a job. Come to create one.

Second, you’re a Harvard student. That means, if you go all-in on what actually lights you up, your passion can become your profession. Pay attention to what you obsess over, the things you lose time doing. What’s the topic that makes you late to a social event because you just need five more minutes with it? That’s not a distraction. That’s the direction.

Third, you don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to stay curious. Follow the questions that pull at you. Let uncertainty be a signal, not a flaw. My path didn’t start with a master plan; it started with a single, awkward, and unfiltered moment of honesty. That was enough.

As I head toward graduation this May, I realize the real pivot wasn’t just from CPG sales to techy startup land. It was from trying to fit into the next big thing to realizing I could help build it.

So to anyone still figuring it out: take the weird internship, follow the rabbit hole, answer the ridiculous question at whiskey night. The path might not look like anyone else’s, but that’s exactly the point.

Daniela Cuellar Zapata (MBA ’25) is from Mexico City, Mexico. Prior to HBS, she attended Arizona State University and The London School of Economics. Post-graduation, Daniela spent most of her career as a sales manager for PepsiCo Frito-Lay, as well as served as an independent consultant for her family’s hotel business, Hoteles Mision.