Twenty secures $5M to challenge CRM giants with open source

Open-source CRM Twenty has raised a $5 million Seed round led by Runa Capital with participation from C-Suite executives at HubSpot, Front, and Pipedrive.

Led by Félix Malfait, Charles Bochet and Thomas Colas des Francs, the startup will use the funds to grow its open source community, develop its product and deploy among Enterprise clients. 

Twenty has over 280 active contributors to its repository.

“Packaged software today tends to make companies more alike.” said co-founder and CEO Felix Malfait.

“To truly stand out and create something unique, companies need more than just off-the-shelf solutions. Twenty will offer a path to real, differentiated value. This is a CRM for those who want to build something that truly stands out and own it end-to-end.”

“Open source is a powerful approach for highly extendable areas where enterprises require customization: own data sources, workflows, AI models, hybrid deployment, and security. This applies not only to cloud and data infrastructure but also to large business suites like CRM or ERP,” said Konstantin Vinogradov, a General Partner at Runa Capital.

“OSS might be the best way to disrupt its established closed-source leaders there, with their proprietary and outdated developer ecosystems. We have been highly impressed by Twenty’s founders and their bold vision from the start, and the outstanding open source traction since then has confirmed that they are on the right track. It is a privilege to support them in building an open-source alternative to Salesforce.”