Leman Tech Leadership Podcast
#194 | Why Co-Founding with Your Brother, Detaching from Your Product, and Staying in the Code Makes You a Better Leader w/ Piotr Karwatka
▶︎ #194 | Why Co-Founding with Your Brother, Detaching from Your Product, and Staying in the Code Makes You a Better Leader w/ Piotr Karwatka @Open Mercato In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Piotr Karwatka, Co-Founder of Open Mercato, a 100% AI-engineered open-source framework for building enterprise CRM and ERP applications. Piotr has spent 26 years in technology, starting with freeware desktop software he built with his brother Tomasz as teenagers. Together they grew Divante from a two-person company to over 300 people before a successful exit, co-created Alokai (formerly Vue Storefront), which raised the largest VC round in Poland at the time, and built Callstack, the well-known React Native contributor, which also ended in an exit. They are also business angels with over 40 portfolio companies, including ElevenLabs. The conversation opens on one of the questions founders ask most often and answer least honestly: can you really do business with family? Piotr's answer is grounded in 26 years of data. The single most important factor was not love or loyalty but culture: specifically, the decision to always treat the company as a product separate from themselves. Piotr and Aleksandra then dig into delegation, control, and the specific fear that drives most early-stage founders to micromanage: not personality, but margin. When you have no financial runway, and every client matters completely, over-controlling is not a character flaw; it is a survival response. The episode also covers the question of whether tech leaders should stay in the code, and Piotr is unambiguous: yes, and anyone who told him otherwise gave him some of the worst advice he ever received. For Piotr, staying technical is not a comfort blanket; it is the thing that keeps your judgment honest. Whether you are a tech founder, a leader trying to delegate without losing your mind, or someone figuring out how to keep both the tech and the human dimensions of leadership alive as your company grows, this conversation offers hard-won perspective from someone who has lived every stage of it. Mentioned in the episode: "Radical Candor" by Kim Scott" "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg" Open Mercato: https://www.openmercato.com AI Tech Leaders training {aihtechleaders.pl}: https://aitechleaders.pl ✉︎ FOLLOW PIOTR ON: ⤵︎ LinkedIn: @piotrkarwatka X: @piotrkarwatka Website: openmercato.com ✉︎ FOLLOW ME ON: ⤵︎ LinkedIn: @aleksandralemanska TikTok: @aleksandra_lemanska X: @lemanskills Get the Book! https://fromcodetopeople.lemanskills.com/ Startup Community Poznan: @startup-community-poznan-scp www.lemanskills.com Join Leadership Pulse! https://lemanskills.com/pulse/
