{"id":205519,"date":"2026-03-25T14:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205519\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T14:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:27:09","slug":"the-new-american-dream-may-come-with-a-broker-a-balance-sheet-and-now-an-ai-copilot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205519\/","title":{"rendered":"The new American dream may come with a broker, a balance sheet, and now, an AI copilot"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years, buying a small business has felt a bit like shopping for a house on a website built in 2004: clunky listings, thin details, vague pricing, and a lot of blind faith. Venturu<\/a>, a Miami-based startup founded by Luis Merchan and Joel Hern\u00e1ndez, thinks that process has been overdue for a reset.<\/p>\n

Their idea is simple: if people had better tools to understand what they were looking at, more of them would seriously consider buying a business.<\/p>\n

Venturu was born out of Merchan\u2019s own experience trying to buy small businesses and running into a process that felt outdated and painfully inefficient.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so many businesses that should be for sale that are not being listed,\u201d Merchan told Refresh Miami.<\/p>\n

Originally from Colombia, Merchan spent years in corporate America at major retailers including Target and Macy\u2019s before moving into entrepreneurship. Later, he built a cannabis company and took it public on Nasdaq, riding the sector\u2019s rise and collapse. After that, he moved into private equity and started acquiring small businesses himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What he found was a market with huge demand and weak infrastructure. Millions of small businesses in the US are owned by baby boomers, many nearing retirement. But the digital tools built to connect sellers and buyers, Merchan argued, have barely changed in decades.<\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez, Venturu\u2019s co-founder and product lead, saw the same opening from the tech side. A longtime builder who started with game servers, mobile apps, and software products, he quickly realized how little innovation had reached the business-for-sale market.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe market hasn\u2019t really moved in the last, I would say, twenty, thirty years,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez said.<\/p>\n

Venturu launched in 2024 and has grown quickly, reaching more than 4,450 verified listings and over 1,550 brokers across all 50 states, according to the company. But the bigger point is not the marketplace alone. It is the intelligence layer Venturu is building on top of it.<\/p>\n

Its new AI Insights feature reads through listing data and gives buyers a plain-English explanation of what they are seeing. That includes opportunity scoring, revenue multiple context, financing signals, lease details, and trust markers tied to the broker behind the listing. The goal is to help first-time buyers get closer to asking the right questions before they ever make contact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe AI does the first meeting for you,\u201d Merchan said.<\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez said that process starts with cleaning up and standardizing a fragmented market. Business-for-sale listings come from a wide mix of brokers, firms, and groups, so Venturu first has to make that information more consistent. From there, the platform checks for errors, flags weak listings, and compares opportunities against similar businesses in the same area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to bring them all together under the same room, so essentially to unify the industry,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez said.<\/p>\n

The founders are clear that they are not trying to replace brokers. Rather, they want to make them more effective by automating the repetitive work while keeping people at the center of the deal. That matters in a market where, according to Merchan, a transaction can take nine to 12 months to close. Venturu believes that timeline can shrink to under 100 days as more of the work around valuation, due diligence, and financing becomes faster and more automated.<\/p>\n

For Merchan, the company\u2019s mission goes beyond efficiency. He sees small business ownership as a path to independence for people who are tired of building someone else\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI firmly believe that the new American dream is not homeownership,\u201d Merchan said. \u201cI think the new American dream is business ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pictured at the top of this story: Venturu founders Luis Merchan, at left, and Joel Hern\u00e1ndez. Pictured below: a screenshot of Venturu\u2019s platform and the team. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:<\/p>\n

\"Riley<\/a> <\/p>\n

I am a Miami-based technology researcher and writer with a passion for sharing stories about the South Florida tech ecosystem. I particularly enjoy learning about GovTech startups, cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence, and innovators that leverage technology to transform society for the better. Always open for pitches via Twitter @rileywk or www.RileyKaminer.com.<\/p>\n

\"Riley<\/a>Latest posts by Riley Kaminer (see all<\/a>) \t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, buying a small business has felt a bit like shopping for a house on a website…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-205519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}