Entrepreneurs
2 Curated Dialogues
Fabien Pinckaers
Key Views & Dialogues
Fabien Pinckaers, CEO @Odoo: The Billionaire Founder Who Doesn’t Care About Money | E1259
Odoo’s €550 million in revenue reflects roughly 50% annual growth sustained for 20 years, alongside extreme profitability and no primary capital since 2014. An 80/20 open-core model monetized its product and community, while cutting small-customer pricing from around €120 to €20 per user per month attracted 2.8 times as many clients. Fabien is betting that horizontal management software consolidates around one to three integrated platforms, while retaining 57% ownership and rejecting both an industrial sale and an IPO.
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- Odoo’s €550 million in revenue is the product of roughly 50% annual growth sustained for 20 years, not one breakout year. Fabien says the company is now “extremely profitable,” has not raised primary capital since 2014 and generates more cash than it can sensibly spend. The harder years meant prolonged near-bankruptcy, late salaries and financings completed when Odoo had little leverage.
- The decisive inflection was business-model fit: services financed product breadth, open-source maintenance failed to renew, and an 80/20 open-core model finally monetized Odoo’s product and community. With roughly two weeks of cash remaining, Odoo shifted to a model in which 80% of features remained open source and 20% were paid. Breaking its promise of permanent openness cost about a year of trust, but the resulting revenue let it expand its development team tenfold and contribute more to open source.
- Fabien treats low pricing as a strategic moat, not foregone monetization. An unsuccessful formula of €10 × users × applications provoked a partner revolt and cost roughly a year; in 2022 Odoo cut small-customer pricing across applications from around €120 to €20 per user per month while charging larger customers more, subsequently attracting 2.8 times as many clients. “If I can decrease the price, I would do it right away.”
- Odoo is explicitly betting that horizontal management software becomes a commodity controlled by one to three integrated platforms. Its suite replaces fragmented CRM, accounting, commerce and logistics products, with application quality taking precedence over industry-specific positioning. Fabien’s long view: as with operating systems and office suites, “everybody will use the same CRM, the same accounting, the same website builder.”
- The operating model rejects standard scale-up orthodoxy: no externally hired VPs, internal promotion only, few recurring meetings, and leaders who remain their teams’ strongest practitioners. Work samples plus IQ testing support offers within roughly five days; a 5,000-person workforce averaging 26 years old operates in small teams, while coaching and retention reduce reliance on layers of management and formal KPI systems.
- Go-to-market economics are unusual even for efficient SaaS: Odoo reached €550 million in revenue through predominantly inbound demand and word of mouth at roughly €3,500 in ARR per customer. Salespeople become product experts through two demos per day; only recently did around 30 people begin testing outbound around 50 industry applications. Enterprise expansion keeps services at 18% of revenue and deliberately removes implementation heaviness.
- Control and time horizon are the cap-table strategy: Fabien owns 57%, buys shares alongside managers, rejects both an industrial sale and an IPO, and provides liquidity through secondaries every three to four years. The latest transaction moved €500 million of shares at a €5 billion valuation, mainly from Summit Partners to Sequoia Capital, CapitalG, BlackRock and Mubadala. He welcomed low transaction prices because “in every transaction I was purchasing shares.”
- Fabien’s AI position is selective: agents are useful where they solve workflow problems, but conventional UX often remains faster. He contrasts an Agentforce help-desk conversation with simply clicking a portal button, while invoice recognition at 98.5% genuinely changes accounting by turning data entry into validation. On a possible AI winter, his answer is deliberately unresolved: “I don’t know.”
20VC: The $5BN Company Built from the Belgian Countryside | The Story of Odoo: The Company with No Plans to Sell, IPO & Their Billionaire Founder Who Does Not Care About Money with Fabien Pinckaers, Founder & CEO @ Odoo
Odoo’s integrated, low-priced ERP has reached €650M ARR, 50% annual growth, and a €5B secondary valuation while remaining founder-controlled and privately held. Its 2022 cut to €20 per user drove 2.8x more client acquisition, but SAP displacement and enterprise expansion may take 10 or 20 years.
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- Odoo does ~650M ARR growing 50% a year for 20 years, from the Belgian countryside, with 5,000 employees and 50,000+ business customers — and Fabien Pinckaers refuses every exit: “We will never sell… there will never be an IPO.” Liquidity is engineered through secondaries every 3–4 years; the latest was €500M at a 5B valuation, Summit Partners selling to Sequoia, BlackRock, Mubadala, and CapitalG — with more buyers than sellers.
- The inversion that breaks VC logic: Fabien wants the valuation LOW, because “in every transaction, I was purchasing shares. All the managers are always buying shares at Odoo. We never sold shares” — to the point of taking out big loans to buy at every round. He raised only twice (€3M at €10M post in 2010; €7M at €30M post on ~€20M revenue), kept 57%, and hasn’t raised primary since 2014.
- The core thesis is commoditization of business software: SMBs run a mess of Slack, Mailchimp, WordPress and spreadsheets; ERP penetration is still under 10%; the market will consolidate like operating systems and Office into “one, two, or three players that will have the whole market.” Odoo’s wedge is doing what “Microsoft tried with Dynamics, likely SAP tried, and Oracle with NetSuite tried” and all failed at — every app, integrated, from €20/user.
- Pricing was both his worst and best decision. A €10 × users × apps formula triggered a partner revolt and “probably lost one year of growth”; the 2022 cut from ~€120 to €20/user — made while everyone else raised prices into inflation — drove 2.8x more client acquisition. ACV is just 3,500 ARR, word of mouth is the main channel, and outbound only started months ago (30 people out of ~1,800 sales).
- Management heresy at scale: no recruited VPs or managers ever (internal promotion only), no budgets shared with teams, no forecasts, no KPIs, no goals for most teams, no recurring meetings, teams of ~10 led by the best practitioner, average employee age 26. Hiring is a work test plus an IQ test (“the second best predictive KPI”), offer within five days. His US KPI parable: the imported star consultant scored worst on every metric — because he got the hardest projects.
- SAP is the stated kill target: he bought sorrysap.com at 26 and used it as the homepage for version 14. Enterprise is opening now “thanks to SAP S/4HANA, which is a disaster — nobody wants to go,” and displacement is “just a matter of time… 10 or 20 years.” On AI agents he’s contrarian: Benioff’s Agentforce demo is “overrated” versus good UX, but AI in accounting hit 98.5% invoice recognition, better than humans — start from the problem, not “I want to do AI.”