Skip to content
The Twenty Minute VCThe Twenty Minute VC

Fabien Pinckaers, CEO @Odoo: The Billionaire Founder Who Doesn’t Care About Money | E1259

Fabien Pinckaers is the Founder & CEO of Odoo, one of the most incredible businesses that you might not have heard of. Built from the countryside of Belgium, they do an astonishing $650M in ARR, they have over 5,000 employees and have over 50,000 companies as customers. Even better, Fabian openly does not ever want to sell the company, IPO, believes that titles in companies are total BS and most management is done completely wrong. ---------------------------------------------- Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (03:09) The Origins of Odoo (10:27) Biggest Challenges in Scaling – Culture, Teams, and Growth (14:01) Why the Pricing Change Was a Game-Changer (21:55) Planning a Business Without a Budget (25:36) Recruiting Young Talent (32:25) Fabien’s Relocation to India (39:56) Competing Against Big Tech Giants (47:05) Lessons in Building a Sales Team (55:46) Salesforce’s Future (59:40) Odoo’s Roadmap to $100B (01:08:17) Quick-Fire Round ---------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Fabien We Discuss: 1. Everything You Know About Management is Wrong: Why is it BS to give people titles in a company? How does Odoo hire people after only one interview? Why does Odoo prefer to hire really young people under 30? Why does Fabien think it is the worst to build a team in Silicon Valley? 2. The Billionaire Who Does Not Care About Money: Why does Fabien literally not care about money and does not even own a house? Why does Fabien refuse to ever sell or IPO Odoo? How does Fabien plan to offer liquidity to investors if he never wants to sell or IPO? 3. Why Did Every VC Turn Down the $5BN Odoo: What are Fabien’s biggest lessons from being rejected by every VC for Odoo? What did they not see that they should have seen? Why did Fabien always want the price of the company on every funding round to be as low as possible? How does Fabien advise founders on pitching VCs today, knowing all he knows? 4. Scaling to $650M in ARR: The Biggest Lessons: Why does Fabien believe the biggest mistake companies make is they lose focus? What did Fabien not do with Odoo that they should have done? What did Fabien do and invest in, that with the benefit of hindsight they should not have done? When did the business start to break with scale? What would Fabien have done differently knowing all he does know? ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Fabien Pinckaers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fpodoo Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #20vc #harrystebbings #fabienpinckaers #odoo #CEO #venturecapital #fundraising #recruiting

Fabien PinckaersguestHarry Stebbingshost
Feb 11, 20251h 15mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Billionaire Odoo Founder Rejects IPOs, Hierarchies, and High Prices

  1. Fabien Pinckaers, founder and CEO of Odoo, explains how he built a 5,000-person, €550M-revenue open-core SaaS company by obsessively focusing on product quality, low pricing, and long-term thinking rather than fundraising, branding, or exits.
  2. He recounts years of near-bankruptcy, multiple business model pivots (services, support, SaaS, then open core), and a painful clash with his open-source community before finding the monetization model that unlocked consistent 50% annual growth.
  3. Odoo’s culture rejects traditional management: no external VP hires, minimal KPIs, no recurring meetings, fast hiring based on practical tests and IQ, internal-only promotions, and extreme emphasis on autonomy, responsibility, and evolution for largely very young teams.
  4. Pinckaers insists he doesn’t care about valuation or personal wealth, refuses the idea of an IPO or sale, and aims instead to commoditize business management software globally, ultimately displacing incumbents like SAP and Salesforce.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Build an exceptional, integrated product before over-optimizing for distribution.

Odoo spent years building a broad, deeply integrated suite (accounting, CRM, logistics, e‑commerce, etc.) before it had a great business model; Pinckaers argues this product depth ultimately made the company defensible and drove word-of-mouth growth.

Be willing to pivot your business model repeatedly—even at cultural cost.

Odoo shifted from services to support contracts to SaaS to an open-core model, upsetting its open-source community in the process, but that final model turned a large user base into sustainable, high-growth revenue.

Pricing can unlock or destroy years of growth; experiment, but course-correct fast.

A misdesigned pricing scheme (charging per user times apps) cost Odoo roughly a year of growth and strained its partner network, while a 2022 price cut for small customers (from ~€120 to €20/user/month) nearly tripled customer acquisition.

Hire for demonstrated ability, not credentials, and promote only from within.

Odoo ignores CVs, uses on-the-job tests plus IQ tests, makes offers in days, and never hires external managers; team leads must be the best individual contributors on their teams, which strengthens culture and execution consistency.

Minimize bureaucracy: few KPIs, no recurring meetings, and no local budgets.

Team leaders are judged by whether their teams get better, not by dashboards; finance controls overall budgets, but individuals are trusted to spend responsibly, which Pinckaers believes saves money and increases ownership.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

You have to be obsessed. I don't think you can succeed if you are not obsessed.

— Fabien Pinckaers

Our product is years ahead of the competition. There is no way they can do what we do.

— Fabien Pinckaers

If you look for people that are perfect in everything, you will get people that are average in everything.

— Fabien Pinckaers

I don't care about money. I don't need money.

— Fabien Pinckaers

No, there will never be an IPO. I don't want to.

— Fabien Pinckaers

Fabien’s early entrepreneurial projects and the origins of OdooBootstrapping, near-bankruptcy, and multiple business model pivotsOpen source to open core transition and community backlashPricing strategy experiments, mistakes, and breakthrough changesOdoo’s unconventional culture, hiring, and management philosophyGlobal expansion strategy and scaling across geographiesCompetitive positioning versus SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce, and AI trendsFounder mindset on obsession, money, valuation, and long-term vision

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome