Life & fun · November 11, 2025
Venturu – Zillow for the market of local businesses
Hey HN, Joel here, co-founder of Venturu. Imagine trying to buy a house before Zillow. That’s what buying a local business is like today. It's a massive market, but it's completely fragmented and stuck in the 90s. My co-founder, Luis, discovered this firsthand by knocking on doors to buy six of his own businesses. I saw it at industry conferences, where at 29, I’m usually the youngest person in the room. The system is built on gatekept information and a wall of fees designed to keep people out. For a small business owner, it starts with a gut punch: you have to pay thousands of dollars just…
In plain words
Venturu is a marketplace platform for buying and selling local businesses, similar to how Zillow operates for real estate. It addresses the fragmented, outdated system where business sales are controlled by brokers who charge high fees and withhold listings. The platform aims to make business valuations and listings accessible directly to owners, reducing barriers to entry and improving transparency in a market currently dominated by gatekeeping and opaque pricing structures.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN, Joel here, co-founder of Venturu. Imagine trying to buy a house before Zillow. That’s what buying a local business is like today. It's a massive market, but it's completely fragmented and stuck in the 90s. My co-founder, Luis, discovered this firsthand by knocking on doors to buy six of his own businesses. I saw it at industry conferences, where at 29, I’m usually the youngest person in the room. The system is built on gatekept information and a wall of fees designed to keep people out. For a small business owner, it starts with a gut punch: you have to pay thousands of dollars just to get an idea of what your life's work is worth. Then, you face thousands more in listing fees just to get it seen on an outdated platform. This broken model forces brokers to be gatekeepers. The high costs mean they can only list a fraction of their clients' businesses, hiding the rest on thousands of separate, clunky websites. We’re trying to fix this by building the single, open, and free platform this market needs. We got rid of the scary upfront fees by offering free, instant valuations, and unlocked the hidden market by making all listings free. It’s one place for owners, buyers, and brokers to finally connect efficiently. It seems to be working. We’ve welcomed over 1,300 brokers who have listed 3,800+ businesses across all 50 states. It's still early days, but our goal is to build this into the definitive marketplace for local businesses, creating the first real source of truth for valuations and making the entire process, from discovery to closing, more straightforward. We’re building in the open and would love your feedback. Ask us anything.
Does the same job
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