Open Mercato: Why I'm Building a TypeScript CRM Framework Instead of Another SaaS

How many times have you heard: "Salesforce is too expensive, but we don't have an alternative"?

I've heard it dozens of times. From Divante's clients, from companies in our Catch The Tornado portfolio, from founders I grab coffee with. Everyone complains about the same thing: CRMs are either too rigid, too expensive, or both.

So I thought — fine, let's build something different.

A Problem I've Seen for 20 Years

Over the past two decades I've built and co-founded several software companies. Divante (exit at a $65M valuation), Vue Storefront/Alokai (Y Combinator, Series A — $40M), Callstack, Open Loyalty. Together with my brother Piotr at Catch The Tornado, we invest in about 10 companies a year. We have over 40 in our portfolio, including ElevenLabs.

Throughout all these years I've seen one repeating pattern: companies buy off-the-shelf SaaS, then cry because they can't adapt it to their processes. Or they build everything from scratch and cry because it takes 18 months and costs millions.

There's nothing in between. Zero.

What Open Mercato Actually Is

. Take the 80%, build your 20%.

And if you have questions — reach out. I'm not a great writer and never will be, but I can talk about building tech products for hours :)

Tomasz Karwatka — co-founder of Divante, Vue Storefront/Alokai, Catch The Tornado. Building and investing in tech companies since 2004.