Open Source Revolution: Twenty Challenges Salesforce with Community-Driven CRM

The CRM market, dominated by Salesforce, is ripe for disruption. Twenty, a bold startup, is creating an open-source alternative, empowering businesses with flexibility, customization, and community-driven innovation.

The Gap in Open Source CRM

Despite successful open-source replicants in other software categories, CRM has lagged. SugarCRM, an early attempt, achieved moderate success but failed to match Salesforce’s dominance. Twenty’s founders, Félix Malfait, and team, recognized this gap and are bridging it.

Twenty’s Vision

Malfait’s long-term thesis: open-source leaders will emerge in every category, particularly those reliant on network effects, ecosystems, and extensibility. Twenty aims to:

1. Build a flexible platform for customization

2. Foster a community-driven ecosystem

3. Provide a comprehensive CRM solution

Key Features

– Object-oriented data structure for customization

– Custom fields and objects (e.g., conference, restaurant)

– List and Kanban views for data visualization

– GraphQL and REST APIs for extensions

– Task and note management

Community and Funding

Twenty boasts:

– 300+ contributors in the last year

– 20,000+ GitHub stars

– $5 million in funding from 50 investors, including notable founders and venture firms (Runa Capital, Y Combinator, Automattic)

Challenging Salesforce

Twenty’s ambitious goal: replicate Salesforce’s flexibility and functionality. By providing a programming language, data model, and customization framework, Twenty aims to enable businesses to:

– Store data

– Execute logic on the backend

– Display results as desired

The Future of Open Source CRM

As Twenty grows, it will focus on:

– Workflows

– Automation

– Ecosystem development

Join the open-source revolution and explore Twenty’s GitHub repository.