Goldfish Group and Viajecito
Goldfish Group and Viajecito
We embed senior strategists directly into their business covering CRO, email marketing, paid media and growth strategy and become their growth team for the long term.
Origin Story / Overview
Introduce yourself.
I'm Pia. I studied visual arts which, as it turns out, had very little to do with what I ended up doing. Over the past decade I've built two businesses: Viajecito, an e-commerce brand I started from scratch and grew hands-on, and more recently Goldfish Group, a growth consultancy I co-founded with my cousin Ines. Goldfish Group is built for e-commerce brands that are already growing but don't have the structure, strategy or team to scale properly. We embed senior strategists directly into their business covering CRO, email marketing, paid media and growth strategy and become their growth team for the long term.
What inspired this venture?
Entrepreneurship was never something I had to be convinced of it was always just part of how I saw the world. Growing up in a family that understood business, that valued building things and taking ownership, gave me a foundation I didn't fully appreciate until I was out there figuring things out on my own. Goldfish Group came about through a bit of a fluke, honestly. But what it became is deeply intentional a business built around the belief that good work starts with good people, and that strategy without execution is just wishful thinking. My cousin Ines is my co-founder, which means in a very real way, family is literally at the centre of what I'm building.
What is this business really about?
Most e-commerce brands at a certain stage of growth have the same problem: they have a team, they have revenue, things are moving but nobody really owns growth. Email is whoever has time. Paid media is running but not really being steered. CRO has never been done properly. Everyone is working hard but the business is growing despite the process, not because of it. Goldfish Group exists to fix that. We step in as the senior team they need but don't want to hire full time and we build the structure, the systems, and the strategy that makes growth something they can depend on, not just hope for.
What do you hope younger family members learn from your story?
That you don't have to have it all figured out at the start. I studied visual arts. I learned e-commerce by doing it, making mistakes, and going again. I discovered CRO after nearly a decade of building a brand. Goldfish Group started as a fluke. None of it was a straight line. And I think that's actually the point the people who build things that last aren't the ones who had the perfect plan. They're the ones who kept going when it was hard and stayed curious when it was easy.
How can our family best support your business?
Honestly, the most valuable thing any family can offer an entrepreneur is belief especially in the early stages when the results aren't visible yet. Beyond that, referrals and introductions are everything in consulting. If anyone in the family knows an e-commerce founder who's scaling and needs a growth team, I'd love the introduction. And for the younger generation who are curious about e-commerce, digital marketing or AI my door is genuinely open. This space is moving fast and the best time to learn it is right now.
Lessons & Advice
What do you wish you'd known earlier?
That the highs and lows are both temporary and both will lie to you. There are moments where everything is clicking and you feel completely on top of the world. And there are moments where you're staring at your laptop wondering what it's all for. Both feelings are real and neither is the full truth. The entrepreneurs I admire most aren't the ones who are always winning they're the ones who are consistent regardless of which season they're in. Consistency, it turns out, is the whole game. I just wish someone had told me that before I rode the emotional rollercoaster quite so many times.
What principle has shaped your success?
Empathy and the ability to actually think. I know that sounds simple but I mean it specifically not just executing, not just following a brief, but genuinely connecting the dots and giving a damn about the outcome. In my experience, the moments that work in business and in life almost always come down to those two things. The people I've trusted most, hired most, and learned most from have all had both. I've tried to build Goldfish Group around that standard. It's not always easy to find, and it's not always easy to maintain. But it's the thing I keep coming back to.
Advice for the next generation.
Start before you feel ready. You will never feel ready. The learning happens in the doing, not in the planning. Find someone you trust to build with an accountability partner, a co-founder, a mentor. Not because you can't do it alone, but because the hard days are easier when someone else is in it with you. And be honest about what you're good at and what you're not. The businesses that get into trouble are usually the ones where the founder is doing everything and admitting nothing. Know your strengths. Build around them. Find people who fill the gaps.
Image Gallery (click to zoom)
Speed Round
Walk us through a slice of your routine.
Most mornings start with coffee and sending my kids to school. Then I log into Slack and greet my team good morning (we are 100% remote). We don't do long morning calls just a quick "here's what's on my mind, here's what I'm working on today." It keeps us aligned without eating into the work. Then I'm usually straight into building whether that's a client strategy, a new AI tool for Goldfish, or something I'm testing for my own brands. I work fast and I work best when I'm in the middle of something real. I love use cases.
Share a challenge you've overcome.
Learning to separate my self-worth from the performance of the business. When things are going well, it's easy to feel like you're winning at everything. When they're not, it can feel like a reflection of who you are. That's a lie entrepreneurship tells you early and often. The work I've done to separate the two to stay steady regardless of what the numbers are doing has probably been the most important non-business skill I've developed.
Share a small win.
Right now, what I'm most excited about is what we're building at Goldfish Group with AI. We're developing internal AI agents that give our strategists superpowers tools that automate the time-consuming parts of growth work so our team can focus on the thinking that actually moves the needle. Watching that come together, knowing it didn't exist six months ago and we built it ourselves, is a feeling I don't take for granted. Viajecito is also doing well. steady, consistent, compounding quietly in the background. There's something deeply satisfying about a business that works on its own. It could be growing faster, but I'll get to it again.
Image Gallery (click to zoom)
Origin Story / Overview
Introduce yourself.
I'm Pia. I studied visual arts which, as it turns out, had very little to do with what I ended up doing. Over the past decade I've built two businesses: Viajecito, an e-commerce brand I started from scratch and grew hands-on, and more recently Goldfish Group, a growth consultancy I co-founded with my cousin Ines. Goldfish Group is built for e-commerce brands that are already growing but don't have the structure, strategy or team to scale properly. We embed senior strategists directly into their business covering CRO, email marketing, paid media and growth strategy and become their growth team for the long term.
What inspired this venture?
Entrepreneurship was never something I had to be convinced of it was always just part of how I saw the world. Growing up in a family that understood business, that valued building things and taking ownership, gave me a foundation I didn't fully appreciate until I was out there figuring things out on my own. Goldfish Group came about through a bit of a fluke, honestly. But what it became is deeply intentional a business built around the belief that good work starts with good people, and that strategy without execution is just wishful thinking. My cousin Ines is my co-founder, which means in a very real way, family is literally at the centre of what I'm building.
What is this business really about?
Most e-commerce brands at a certain stage of growth have the same problem: they have a team, they have revenue, things are moving but nobody really owns growth. Email is whoever has time. Paid media is running but not really being steered. CRO has never been done properly. Everyone is working hard but the business is growing despite the process, not because of it. Goldfish Group exists to fix that. We step in as the senior team they need but don't want to hire full time and we build the structure, the systems, and the strategy that makes growth something they can depend on, not just hope for.
What do you hope younger family members learn from your story?
That you don't have to have it all figured out at the start. I studied visual arts. I learned e-commerce by doing it, making mistakes, and going again. I discovered CRO after nearly a decade of building a brand. Goldfish Group started as a fluke. None of it was a straight line. And I think that's actually the point the people who build things that last aren't the ones who had the perfect plan. They're the ones who kept going when it was hard and stayed curious when it was easy.
How can our family best support your business?
Honestly, the most valuable thing any family can offer an entrepreneur is belief especially in the early stages when the results aren't visible yet. Beyond that, referrals and introductions are everything in consulting. If anyone in the family knows an e-commerce founder who's scaling and needs a growth team, I'd love the introduction. And for the younger generation who are curious about e-commerce, digital marketing or AI my door is genuinely open. This space is moving fast and the best time to learn it is right now.
Speed Round
Walk us through a slice of your routine.
Most mornings start with coffee and sending my kids to school. Then I log into Slack and greet my team good morning (we are 100% remote). We don't do long morning calls just a quick "here's what's on my mind, here's what I'm working on today." It keeps us aligned without eating into the work. Then I'm usually straight into building whether that's a client strategy, a new AI tool for Goldfish, or something I'm testing for my own brands. I work fast and I work best when I'm in the middle of something real. I love use cases.
Share a challenge you've overcome.
Learning to separate my self-worth from the performance of the business. When things are going well, it's easy to feel like you're winning at everything. When they're not, it can feel like a reflection of who you are. That's a lie entrepreneurship tells you early and often. The work I've done to separate the two to stay steady regardless of what the numbers are doing has probably been the most important non-business skill I've developed.
Share a small win.
Right now, what I'm most excited about is what we're building at Goldfish Group with AI. We're developing internal AI agents that give our strategists superpowers tools that automate the time-consuming parts of growth work so our team can focus on the thinking that actually moves the needle. Watching that come together, knowing it didn't exist six months ago and we built it ourselves, is a feeling I don't take for granted. Viajecito is also doing well. steady, consistent, compounding quietly in the background. There's something deeply satisfying about a business that works on its own. It could be growing faster, but I'll get to it again.
Lessons & Advice
What do you wish you'd known earlier?
That the highs and lows are both temporary and both will lie to you. There are moments where everything is clicking and you feel completely on top of the world. And there are moments where you're staring at your laptop wondering what it's all for. Both feelings are real and neither is the full truth. The entrepreneurs I admire most aren't the ones who are always winning they're the ones who are consistent regardless of which season they're in. Consistency, it turns out, is the whole game. I just wish someone had told me that before I rode the emotional rollercoaster quite so many times.
What principle has shaped your success?
Empathy and the ability to actually think. I know that sounds simple but I mean it specifically not just executing, not just following a brief, but genuinely connecting the dots and giving a damn about the outcome. In my experience, the moments that work in business and in life almost always come down to those two things. The people I've trusted most, hired most, and learned most from have all had both. I've tried to build Goldfish Group around that standard. It's not always easy to find, and it's not always easy to maintain. But it's the thing I keep coming back to.
Advice for the next generation.
Start before you feel ready. You will never feel ready. The learning happens in the doing, not in the planning. Find someone you trust to build with an accountability partner, a co-founder, a mentor. Not because you can't do it alone, but because the hard days are easier when someone else is in it with you. And be honest about what you're good at and what you're not. The businesses that get into trouble are usually the ones where the founder is doing everything and admitting nothing. Know your strengths. Build around them. Find people who fill the gaps.
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