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 millio