Romero Rodrigues is Managing Partner of Headline Brazil, an early-stage venture capital firm investing across Latin America, with $516m in four funds and more than 90 portfolio companies since 2012.
An entrepreneur and investor for nearly three decades, he co-founded Buscapé in 1998, one of Brazil's first startups, where he was CEO for 16 years, led 3 funding rounds and more than 20 acquisitions. In 2009, he led the company's sale to Naspers/Prosus for $374m, the largest acquisition of a Brazilian startup at the time. He left in 2014, with the company at more than R$ 600 million in annualized revenue, 1,500 employees and operations in 18 countries across 3 continents.
He started investing as an angel while still running Buscapé and, after leaving, became a professional venture capital investor. In all, he has been involved with more than 120 startups. Nine have surpassed $1b: Wellhub, Olist, Rappi, iFood, Hotmart, VTEX, Ascenty, Wayfair and Pismo, five of them already sold or listed. At Pismo, he was the first institutional investor; Visa bought it for $1b in 2024.
He has served on the boards of listed and private technology companies: Wayfair (NYSE), TOTVS and Neogrid (B3) and Pismo, as well as Endeavor Brasil. He holds a degree in electrical engineering from the University of São Paulo (Poli-USP) and completed the Stanford Executive Program (SEP) at the Graduate School of Business.
