SOLUTION · SOLO OPERATOR

One person, an entire C-Suite.

You're the marketing team, the sales team, the ops team, and the on-call CTO. Every advisor tells you the same thing: "you need to hire." But you can't — not at the rates a real CMO or VP Sales charges, and not before you have revenue to justify the burn.

Merkava lets you activate a department instead, each one run by its own AI exec. Marketing runs your content and outreach. Sales qualifies every deal. Operations keeps the company cadence. Engineering reviews your stack and tells you honestly when a non-Merkava tool is better. $749/mo for the whole C-Suite. One operator, real org chart, no raise required.

THE TOOLS ARE THE CHEAPEST PART

Solo doesn't mean stitched. When you activate Marketing, you get a CMO and the specialists who run the work — Beacon (SEO), Quillsly (content), Nitrous (ads), and Webster (web). They operate those tools for you, unified in one Dashboard on a shared data layer. You replace Surfer, Buffer, and Webflow — and the headcount that would have run them alone.

THE PAIN

Context-switching isn't "productivity" — it's overhead.

RECOMMENDED STACK

Two Plugins at first. Add as the business asks.

Start here. These four carry the most weight for a solo operator and compose well under Merkava Core (Prospector + Beacon are built in — you get them either way).

PRICING
Cheapest department
$49 / mo
The Dashboard itself is free — you pay only when you activate a department. Finance · CFO starts the lineup at $49/mo; Engineering · CTO is $99/mo. Add Quillsly or Relay (usage-priced, free during beta) alongside any department. No per-seat tax. Full pricing

Built for the company of one.

Merkava is live today. Start a free 7-day trial on any department — no waitlist, card required at activation.

VS. THE ALTERNATIVES

How Merkava compares.

vs. Notion
Notion is a documents + databases + wiki tool. Great for notes and light workflows. Not integrated — you still glue it to your CRM, your analytics, your AI via Zapier. Merkava is Merkava itself; the entity layer is shared across every Plugin so the deal in Prospector, the employee in Crew, and the scorecard in Centerline are the same row.
vs. Airtable
Airtable is the best flexible-database tool — structured but bring-your-own-workflow. Strong for ops teams that want to build. Weak as a BI platform because the dashboards, AI actions, and portfolio-rollups are all additional glue. Merkava ships BI + Forge pre-wired to the shared entity layer.
vs. a Zapier stack
A typical solo operator runs HubSpot + Notion + Linear + Stripe + Loom + Zapier + 10 hand-rolled automations. Functional. Brittle. Every integration is one OAuth rotation away from silent failure. Merkava is what those seven tools were pretending to be.
QUESTIONS

FAQ.

Is Merkava a CRM?

Merkava is Merkava — it includes a CRM. Prospector is the sales Plugin — deals, pipeline, contacts, clients, quick-action activity logs. It is one of the Plugins shipped in the Merkava core, so you do not install it separately.

How does Merkava compare to HubSpot for a solo operator?

HubSpot is sales-first and priced per seat — you pay even when there's only one of you. Merkava is operator-first and priced per department. Activate one department from $49/mo (Finance) or the whole C-Suite for $749/mo — each department is the AI exec plus their specialist Plugins, not a per-seat tier. For a solo operator who'd otherwise hire a fractional CMO, COO, or CTO, this replaces a $5-10K/mo-and-up bench at a price you can run on day one. The tools are the cheapest part of what you're getting.

Can I connect my own AI key?

Bring-your-own-key (BYOK) for OpenAI, Anthropic, or Perplexity is on the roadmap. Today, Forge inference is included in every department subscription — nothing extra to connect.

What do I actually get when I activate my first department?

Activating a department includes the C2 operating playbook, Forge inference, the Merkava core, and the department's AI exec plus their specialist Plugins at the bundled tier price. Sales at $199/mo is your VP Sales running Prospector, OODA, and Signals. Marketing at $249/mo is your CMO running specialists including Beacon, Quillsly, Nitrous, Webster, Affiliation, Freeform, Manifest. Operations at $199/mo is your COO running the ops specialists. Engineering at $99/mo is your CTO running honest stack reviews. Or activate the whole C-Suite for $749/mo.

What happens if I grow past one venture?

There's no fixed venture cap on the core surface — most operators run several ventures from one workspace comfortably. Department and Plugin subscriptions are per-tenant, not per-venture, so adding a second business doesn't multiply your bill. Need a custom configuration for a larger footprint: email [email protected].

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