Last February, we sat down with Daniel Rodriguez, the Mexican serial entrepreneur behind Adquiere.co, a new tech-enabled M&A platform aiming to unlock much-needed liquidity in Latin America’s startup and SMB ecosystem. Daniel’s story comes at the perfect time – nearly every VC and founder we talk to has the same concern these days: “Where are the exits?”

In this episode, we dive into why M&A matters now more than ever in LatAm, and how Adquiere is tackling the region’s exit gap head-on. Daniel shares how a failed acquisition of his last company sparked the idea for Adquiere, why small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) may hold the key to a virtuous cycle of reinvestment, and how connecting cross-border capital (think the Hispanic diaspora) can supercharge the ecosystem. This conversation is packed with insights on building in public, democratizing acquisitions, and preparing early for an exit – whether you’re a startup founder or an SMB owner, you won’t want to miss these learnings.

🚀 Founded: 2024 (Monterrey, Mexico)
📈 Stage: N/A - Bootstrapped
💰 Total Funding Raised: $0
🤝 Investors: N/A
🎯 Mission: Adquiere’s mission is to democratize M&A in LATAM by making it simple, transparent, and accessible to anyone looking to buy, sell, or invest in businesses.

Adquiere is the marketplace where vetted Hispanic businesses connect with trusted buyers. Companies can quickly list their business, get an instant valuation, and securely share information through automated NDAs and LOIs. By simplifying and bringing transparency to a complex and unclear process, Adquiere helps deals move faster, safer, and with greater confidence.

Before he ever thought about building an M&A marketplace, Daniel Rodriguez was living the founder life in Mexico for well over a decade. Born and raised in Monterrey, he started his career at Microsoft but soon felt the pull of entrepreneurship. “If I can’t sell, I can’t be an entrepreneur,” he figured – so he left his cozy tech job after 6 months to test his mettle in sales and startups.

Over the years, Daniel co-founded multiple ventures across industries: an early app for discovering local experiences (way before Google Maps and Yelp were big in Mexico), a software development studio (Axented), a telehealth startup, a proptech platform, and even a food delivery business that went head-to-head with giants like Rappi and UberEats. Not every venture thrived – in fact, Daniel jokes that he and his co-founders “made every mistake in the book (and added a few new ones!).” But each experience taught him invaluable lessons and even yielded one successful exit (selling that delivery startup after battling the big players).

Importantly, running a dev shop like Axented gave Daniel a front-row seat to other founders’ journeys as well. His team built products for startups and large corporations alike, across different countries. This exposure helped him see what worked and what didn’t in various businesses. By the time 2024 rolled around, Daniel had amassed a rare combination of tech know-how, sales chops, and a deep network in the Mexican startup scene. He was known as an operator who could speak the language of both engineers and investors – the kind of person who might just be crazy enough to tackle LatAm’s hardest problem: the lack of exits.

The idea for Adquiere was born out of frustration and “what if” questions. In 2020, amid the pandemic, Daniel’s company Axented started getting acquisition interest from U.S. firms looking to buy Mexican software studios (to expand via nearshore talent). Intrigued, Daniel and his partners engaged in talks and even brought on an M&A advisor to explore a sale. After months of negotiation, they came within inches of a signed deal – only for the buyer to back out at the last minute. It was a heartbreaking near-miss.

Yet, in that setback lay the seeds of a new venture. The would-be advisor from the failed deal (now Daniel’s co-founder at Adquiere) helped him ponder big questions: Why is it so hard to find another buyer? Where do you even look? How can you trust they’re serious? Daniel remembered a U.S. site he had registered on – Acquire.com (formerly MicroAcquire) – a startup marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. If something like that works in the U.S., what about Latin America? He surveyed the landscape and saw only fragmented solutions: a niche e-commerce business marketplace in Chile here, a small classifieds site for mom-and-pop shops there. Nowhere was anyone addressing M&A for the mass of Latin American businesses – especially the SMBs and micro-businesses that form the backbone of local economies.

That lightbulb moment had Daniel on the phone with his former advisor the very next morning: “Send me your bill for the last deal, but I still want to talk – I have this idea.” They agreed the opportunity was real. Why should selling your company be limited to the well-connected or the wealthy?

In mid-2024, Daniel and his co-founders set out to democratize mergers and acquisitions in LatAm. They envisioned Adquiere as part M&A advisory firm (to guide deals) and part online marketplace (to open up deal flow). Unlike traditional brokers or banks that jealously guard deals, Adquiere would be an open platform where “everyone can sell, everyone can invest, everyone can buy.” And they’d even invite the traditional brokers to join rather than fight – offering partnership programs so brokers and small M&A firms could list deals and tap into a broader pool of buyers.