§ 05 · About · Why this company

Two founders.
One bet.

Drew and I grew up in Libertyville. Same high school. Same town we still live in.

We didn’t start in a garage. We started inside real businesses, watching good operators get pulled into the weeds every day. Not because they were bad at the job. Because the tools they bought were built to create dependency.

Sauce is the thing underneath the software. So the business runs whether you’re in the room or not. That’s the whole idea.

Founded 2024
Headcount Two co-founders + delivery network
Based Libertyville, IL · Chicagoland
Status Now booking
§ 05A · Who runs this

The whole
company.

01 / CO-FOUNDER COO
Malcolm Sullivan, Co-founder and COO of Sauce Technologies, Libertyville, IL
Malcolm · Libertyville, IL

Malcolm Sullivan

Co-founder · COO · The room

Libertyville. Libertyville High School. Three years (2022 to 2025) running operations at 3G Healthcare Real Estate, an Indianapolis-area skilled-nursing acquisition firm. The work that became Sauce started there: moving institutional knowledge out of one operator’s head and into systems the rest of the business could use. Co-founded Sauce Technologies LLC with Drew in March 2026.

Runs commercial, GTM, and scoping. Answers the phone: (847) 558-0405. Email: [email protected].

Lives in
Libertyville, IL
02 / CO-FOUNDER CTO
Drew Fortini, Co-founder and CTO of Sauce Technologies, Libertyville, IL
Drew · Libertyville, IL

Drew Fortini

Co-founder · CTO · The build

Libertyville. Libertyville High School. Nine and a half years (Sep 2016 to Mar 2026) running Diatonic Visuals, a Chicago creative and infrastructure agency for hospitality, restaurant, medical, and entertainment clients. Before that, infrastructure work at Thomas Guard. After Diatonic, technical architecture at Hudson Burnham and five-plus years as Senior Creative Director at Craftsman Cafe (501(c)(3) media nonprofit). Co-founded Sauce Technologies LLC with Malcolm in March 2026.

Runs architecture and the agent runtime. Has personally built every Blueprint shipped to a client.

Reach him: (847) 340-2088 · [email protected]. Based in Libertyville. Drives the same routes to client sites Malcolm does.

Lives in
Libertyville, IL
Delivery network

Specialists step in by engagement, never by handoff. Named in the statement of work, not after it. We don’t pad the about page with advisors.

§ 05B · What we believe

Five stances.
Each one costs us money.

  1. 01

    No lock-in.

    Source code, infrastructure, and credentials are yours from day one. Managed Services are month-to-month.

    Why it matters

    Customers stop trusting a vendor the moment leaving feels harder than staying. We design the exit before the engagement.

    What it proves

    Every Custom Products engagement ships with a one-page exit doc on day one: repo URL, infra credentials, runbook, dependency list. Managed Services is month-to-month. No minimum term, no auto-renewal, no exit fees. We will help you leave faster than most firms will help you onboard.

  2. 02

    No rip-and-replace.

    We work with your existing Salesforce, HubSpot, Stripe, Quickbooks, Notion, Airtable, Google, and Microsoft stack. We connect. We don’t replace.

    Why it matters

    The switching cost is almost always larger than the integration cost. Every “replace it all” pitch is paid for in months of dropped work and a team that resents the new login. We refuse to add that to the bill.

    What it proves

    3G Healthcare Real Estate runs on Zoho CRM. We layered the VÄV Atlas intelligence platform on top, tracking 14,710 skilled-nursing facilities across all 50 states. Zoho stayed Zoho. Our work lives in the layer above. In production since 2025.

  3. 03

    You own everything.

    Data lives on systems you control. You can leave anytime and take it with you. No exit fees.

    Why it matters

    When the provider owns the data, the provider owns the renewal. We will not be the reason your next buyer’s due-diligence checklist has a red row on it.

    What it proves

    Knowledge Capture, our five-pipeline architecture for institutional knowledge across Slack, Supabase, Notion, and Airtable, runs in production at Sauce (P1 to P4 live as of April 2026). When we ship it as a Custom Product, you get a fork of the same repo, the same infra in your accounts, the same runbook. Nothing lives on a Sauce-only system. The off-ramp is the on-ramp.

  4. 04

    We say no to work that doesn’t give you time back.

    If a project would just add complexity, we say so. That stance costs us revenue.

    Why it matters

    The bar isn’t “is this technically doable.” The bar is “does it return more hours than it consumes, every week, after the first month.” If the math doesn’t clear, we won’t take the deal.

    What it proves

    Most months we turn down at least one engagement. If a project would just add complexity, another dashboard nobody opens, another tool the founder has to babysit, we say so. Sometimes we recommend a Quick Win instead. Sometimes we point you at a competitor better suited for the broader work. Saying no costs us revenue. Selling work we don’t believe in costs more.

  5. 05

    Neighbors, not vendors.

    Based in Libertyville, IL. Malcolm drives past your storefront.

    Why it matters

    The clients we do our best work with are within a 90-minute drive. The handoff is in person. The escalation is a phone call to a number that goes to a phone.

    What it proves

    Drew and I both grew up in Libertyville. We went to Libertyville High School. Sauce is headquartered here because this is home. Malcolm drives past your storefront. This is not a remote agency. The geography is the strategy.

§ 05C · What we are not

We name the
three things
so you don’t
have to guess.

§ 05D · Where we work from

Libertyville,
Illinois.

Forty-one miles north of the Loop. The address you drive to. Most current engagements sit inside a ninety-minute radius: Chicago, the North Shore, the manufacturing belt out to Rockford, the lakeshore down to Gary.

§ 05E · Doctrine

Five lines we read out before kickoff. We don’t print them on a wall. We pass them along until they show up in your meetings without us.

  1. i.

    If you cannot step away, it is not working yet.

  2. ii.

    Your time is the metric. Not dashboards. Not busy work.

  3. iii.

    Structure before scale. Duct tape does not survive growth.

  4. iv.

    We find out what is true before we build anything.

  5. v.

    You get outcomes. We own the work that produces them.

If the work above sounds like the firm you wish you’d called two years ago, call us now.

Architecture, not apps.