What can Open Mercato (and the entire enterprise software market) learn from Palantir?

What can Open Mercato (and the entire enterprise software market) learn from Palantir?
Is Open Mercato a “Palantir for ERP/CRM”?

In “The Palantirization of Everything”, a16z accurately explains why the enterprise world is moving away from buying boxed software and toward buying outcomes.
That’s exactly the same logic on which Palantir Technologies was built — and something I’ve been writing about intensively for the past year.

So how does this translate to Open Mercato?

1. “McKinsey with code” is a market-proven model

Palantir won in part because it had Forward-Deployed Engineers — people who embedded themselves inside organizations and made software actually deliver value.

Open Mercato wants to do the same:
an elite team + a working application delivered in weeks, not quarters.

In an AI-driven world where everyone is overwhelmed by possibilities, people are still the bridge between technology and outcomes.

2. Open–Closed Principle as protection against the services trap

a16z warns how easy it is to become “Accenture for X” — expensive, fully custom services with limited scalability.

Palantir avoids this because its engineers don’t build everything from scratch; they build on Foundry and Gotham primitives.

Open Mercato follows the same path through:

• a strong core,
• an Open–Closed architecture.

The result? Customization becomes platform extensions — not endless bespoke code.

3. AI as the missing scalability lever

Palantir’s model is powerful, but… hard to scale.
It depends on rare people who combine deep technical and business skills — true “unicorns.”

Open Mercato adds something Palantir historically didn’t have:

• AI-assisted engineering,
• a developer and partner network enabled by open source.

This realistically boosts team productivity by 3–10x and removes dependency on a single vendor and its Forward-Deployed Engineers.

4. Only “high-stakes” problems — not pet projects

Palantir operates where the stakes are massive: security, healthcare, billions of dollars.
That’s not exactly the same market as Open Mercato — but we also target hard, high-impact domains.

Open Mercato focuses on:

• HealthTech, finance, and mission-critical customer operations,
• new R&D initiatives at large enterprises,
• enterprise-grade security.

For a simple CRM? Overkill.

For systems that increase EBITDA and power real R&D? A very rational choice.

5. GTM: services as scaffolding, not the house

a16z is clear: forward deployment is a means, not the end goal.

In Open Mercato, every implementation:

• stress-tests the core,
• adds new modules,
• shortens time-to-value for future customers.

I’m seeing this approach resonate strongly with the market right now.
How does it feel from your perspective? Let me know.

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