Very Small Entities (VSEs) of México are important to the economy because of their contribution to the growing demand of software. The ISO/IEC 29110 series has become a highly adopted standard in México because it is one of the Quality Standards recognized by the government, the industry and academia. This is confirmed by the increasing number of VSEs certified to this standard since 2013. Over 46 of the 53 VSEs certified in Latin America are from México. The objective of this research was to perform an exploratory analysis of the factors that motivate and affect the motivation of VSEs in the implementation of this standard. To perform this research, a case study was conducted and a questionnaire to collect data was developed. The sample of our research is a set of 15 VSEs that have adopted the software Basic profile of ISO/IEC 29110 to improve their software development process. This research provides the factors that motivates positively and negatively the adoption of the ISO/IEC 29110 standard by VSEs. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.