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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 12, 20251h 15mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:09

    Intro

    1. FP

      You have to be obsessed. I don't think you can succeed if you are not obsessed. I always wanted the price to be low, because in every transaction, I was purchasing shares. All the manager are always buying shares at Odoo. We never sold shares. No, there will never be an IPO. When I was 26, I purchased the domain name sorrysep.com, because I thought that one day I would be much bigger than them and then I would use this domain name. (laughs)

    2. HS

      Ready to go? Fabien, I am so excited for this. Listen, I am a SaaS nerd, and Odoo is one of the most incredible stories. So thank you so much for joining me today.

    3. FP

      Thank you for having me.

    4. HS

      Now, I would love to start. You started your first business at 13 with a business management software company. Dude, what's the story there?

    5. FP

      Oh, it was just, uh, I- I'm a developer. I also like management. I was reading a lot of books. It was just friends of my father and I did management software for them. And I started with one and then two and then a lot of people.

    6. HS

      Okay, so you started with one to a lot of people. Were you kind of aware that you were building a business and you were wanting to make money at the time? Like, how were you thinking about it?

    7. FP

      Uh, it was not so much about getting money. It was more about building something. What I live- like is to build software that people use, that, uh, have an impact for them. So the money was great. I, I mean, but it was 150 euro at the time, so. (laughs) So it, it was just for doing something.

    8. HS

      What happens next? Then you're in school. You're 15, 16. Are you just, like, the smartest kid in school and school's easy?

    9. FP

      I didn't go to the lecture. I was more doing business or having fun and drinking beers. (laughs)

    10. HS

      (laughs)

    11. FP

      But, uh, yeah, I was doing a lot of... I continued developing software for, for companies during, during the university. I did a lot of things like e-commerce. I did virus, antivirus, games, uh, a lot of... I had a T-shirt company, a lot of different things.

    12. HS

      You had a T-shirt company?

    13. FP

      Yeah.

    14. HS

      What was that about?

    15. FP

      Oh, I, I'm passionate about open source, you know, Linux stuff and so on. So I did a e-commerce with Linux T-shirts and ties and DBN and everything. And I sold, I actually sold a lot, but (laughs) it was really painful to, to post all these T-shirts every day.

    16. HS

      My God, you realize the, the challenges of actually selling physical products.

    17. FP

      It started to be a logistic challenge-

    18. HS

      Oh my God.

    19. FP

      ... for, for a student that wants to drink beer, it's not great. (laughs)

    20. HS

      (laughs) I- I love that. Okay, so what would you say was your, like, first real business?

    21. FP

      I think it's... First real business? It's, I...

    22. HS

      'Cause you had, like, an art marketplace, no?

    23. FP

      Yes. That's what... That's a big one, yes.

    24. HS

      Uh, this oust- outsold eBay.

    25. FP

      Yeah. I was selling, uh, more objects than ebay.be. So 15,000 art, uh, per month, uh, at the time. Uh, I was working with auction houses, antique dealers, art market, art palace. And I, I started to be big, one of the biggest of Belgium, the biggest of Belgium, actually.

    26. HS

      Was that making much money?

    27. FP

      Uh, not so much. The business model was shitty. (laughs)

    28. HS

      (laughs)

    29. FP

      I think I did something like 5,000 euro per month, which for me as a student was great. But, uh, for what I built,

  2. 3:09 – 10:27

    The Origins of Odoo

    1. FP

      was nothing.

    2. HS

      Okay, so we have that. And then Odoo. How does Odoo come about?

    3. FP

      So I- I'm, I'm passionate about development, of course, and management. And Odoo was, for me, kind of a way of putting all my patience together in a single software. So I had all these different activities, T-shirt, art markets, antivirus and everything. And at some point I said, "Okay, I will stop everything and focus on one thing that I really like, is to build management software." And that's what I did with, uh, with Odoo. And I started small with the, uh, auction houses, that they were my customer for, for e-commerce websites.

    4. HS

      What was your first product?

    5. FP

      My first product with Odoo is, I- I did the opposite of traditional, of the... You know, usually you, you start with an MVC small product. (laughs) I did the complete opposite. I did everything. I started with accounting, logistic, purchase, everything at once. So it took me two years to build the first version of the product.

    6. HS

      Was that the right decision? 'Cause we're trained in, like, MVP lean startup. You went for, as my team called it, the fat startup-

    7. FP

      (laughs) Yeah.

    8. HS

      ... which is, you know, doing it all first.

    9. FP

      So I remember, um, an article of Paul Graham at the time, and he said, "If you want to have a big impact to build a big company, you have to fix a big problem." So I had this story in mind that I want to do something very complex. And, uh, doing everything companies need is actually a big problem. So I, I started to, to, to tackle this challenge.

    10. HS

      I love that. Do you worry that by doing everything, you lose focus?

    11. FP

      Yes, and so it, it was very risky because it took time to monetize and, and get to something that I could sell and everything. But know that I'm looking back, it's probably what made Odoo today. Is because I thought about the big picture, everything smoothed together, and it's not a batch of different software.

    12. HS

      How do you have feature parity? How are the products as good as the single point solutions when there are 50 of them in the early days?

    13. FP

      Yeah. Um, initially I started as a service company. So I built everything customers were asking for. (laughs) So I built features and features and features. The, the product-

    14. HS

      Which is what we're told not to do.

    15. FP

      Uh, yeah, but I bootstrapped the company. So when you bootstrap a company, you need money. And my way of getting money was to just sell services and development. Not a good business model, but (laughs) I grew the company to 100 people on that basis. So it's kind of worked, but I struggled a lot. Like, a few years close to bankruptcy.

    16. HS

      Okay, so you scaled to 100 people with professional services, very hands-on approach.

    17. FP

      Yes.

    18. HS

      In that time, you said bankruptcy loomed. Take me to one of those times. What happened?

    19. FP

      Um.

    20. HS

      What was the worst time?

    21. FP

      Uh, it's not like there is one time. It's... When you are close to bankruptcy, it's for, for months and months and months. (laughs) So you don't sleep, you work much harder, you get customer just because they pay faster, not because it's a good deal. So you do bad trade-off. Um, but, uh, because of that, I was the main shareholder and I stayed one, so I didn't needed money at the time.

    22. HS

      Why did you not raise money?

    23. FP

      Initially, I think I was not just thinking about it. It was, uh, I, I was building the business, growing the company, focusing on that. I wanted to keep the majority of the shares. And in 2010, uh, then I had to do a pivot in the business model. I wanted to stop services activities and re-focus as a software vendor model. That's when I raised my first round.

    24. HS

      Okay. So 2010 we go, "We wanna focus on software and we want to be less services." Talk to me about that decision and how you came to it.

    25. FP

      That's what I wanted to do initially from the beginning, but I, it gets to a point where the, the software was very complete, but, uh, with a shitty user interface. (laughs) So I was not happy about it and I thought, "No, it's time to refocus and invest in R&D and build a software man- model where it gets recurring revenues and, and everything." So I decided to stop all my services activities from one day to another.

    26. HS

      Wow.

    27. FP

      But to fund that, I, I, I needed, uh, to do my first, uh, fundraising.

    28. HS

      How much did you raise in that fundraising?

    29. FP

      Three millions of euro.

    30. HS

      Three million euros. How did it go? This is your first round, this is the first round you've raised. How did it go?

  3. 10:27 – 14:01

    Biggest Challenges in Scaling – Culture, Teams, and Growth

    1. FP

    2. HS

      I love that. Okay. With the growth, there are always challenges. There are always problems with culture, with scaling teams. What are the first things that broke?

    3. FP

      Not so much. So one of the big issue I had at the time is that I deceived the community because I built the community with me on the open source mindset. Like, "We are open source. We will always be open source," (laughs) and, uh, "Property is bad and we are not like that," and, and thing like that. And, um, I fought to keep this open source business model, but to the point where we were close to bankruptcy, so I had to switch. And when I switched to open core, it start, it started a big fight with the community. They were deceived because we built them on another story. And so the marketing was very bad. A lot of people criticizing us. Our partner were leaving, trying to find competitors. But the product was good, so the majority of them stayed with the product. Looking back, if I had, uh, if I had pitched them correctly, like, "We are today open source, but maybe in the future, we will need to monetize," (laughs) then I wouldn't have had that many issues.

    4. HS

      Do you think great product always wins?

    5. FP

      Uh, that I'm sure about that. The, uh, we have had difficulties, we have had, uh... but the thing that kept us is the product.

    6. HS

      Okay. Why is it then that we are told focus on distribution, focus on marketing, focus on brand? If great product always won, the world would look very different.

    7. FP

      But at the end most, it's m- the great products always win, no?

    8. HS

      No.

    9. FP

      You can s- you can, you can save time with marketing. You can save two or three years, you can grow the company, but at some point you cannot... the, the product matters. I am on a market that is very slow and, you know, ERPs are very slow. RCPs is still shitty after 20 years. (laughs) Uh, Microsoft Dynamics too. On a slower market, it's the best product that wins.

    10. HS

      What product decision did you make that with the benefit of hindsight, looking back, you wish you hadn't made?

    11. FP

      The worst decision I did and the best ones are the pricing.

    12. HS

      Hmm.

    13. FP

      I did a very bad pricing change. So when you are, when, when you are, when you have difficulties you try to change everything. Try change the product, the business model, the, the service you sell, and the pricing. So at the time, we were changing the pricing every year, which was very complex.

    14. HS

      Changing the pricing every year?

    15. FP

      Yeah, we were experimenting.

    16. HS

      Wow.

    17. FP

      And one of the worst decision I did is one of, one of these price change, we probably lost one year of, of growth. Because when you work with partners, if it doesn't work, then it takes time to rebuild the trust and, uh, and everything.

    18. HS

      What was wrong with the pricing?

    19. FP

      So, the way Odoo works is that you have a suite of business apps, CRM, e-commerce, accounting, uh, and-

    20. HS

      You have so many products.

    21. FP

      Yes. And, uh, at that point I wanted to have a price that grows with the value of the software. That the more users you have, the bigger the price, like usual. But also, the more applications you have, the bigger the price. So I did a price which was like, uh, 10 euro times the number of users times the number of application you use. So it was growing very aggressively. (laughs) And, uh, it was too high, so p- the partners didn't like it, they did a big pushback. They refused to sell it. It was really difficult. But you know when you have partner network and you change the price, you never know... The, the partners, they always react to any change. So you never know if it's because the price is wrong or it's because of the transition, their resistance to change. So when you have this, you, for a few months, you try to convince them, "My price is good, you don't understand the value, the pri- you have, it's good to have a price aligned with the value." Uh, so it took us like nine months to, to go back to the old price, so-

    22. HS

      Yeah.

    23. FP

      ... it was very hard for the company.

    24. HS

      Uh, incredibly challenging working with partner networks and

  4. 14:01 – 21:55

    Why the Pricing Change Was a Game-Changer

    1. HS

      pricing. You also did a pricing change in 2022?

    2. FP

      That, that's one of our best decisions. (laughs)

    3. HS

      Yeah. I mean, I saw the numbers post the pricing, and it's like this. It's like, it's up and to the right. Why was that such a good decision on the benefit of hindsight?

    4. FP

      Uh, this price change was actually to decrease the price on the small clients and increase it for the larger clients. And for the small clients, we were actually too, too expensive. For all our applications, it was something around 120 euro, uh, per user per month. But if you have a single user or two user, 120 euro is still a budget. Um, so we decreased it to 20 euros, uh, at a time where everybody were increasing their price. It was with inflation, everybody was increasing the price, so we said, "Okay, let's decrease 20 euros." And so acquisitions started to, to boost very quickly. And we, the, the, we attracted 2.8 times more clients since that date.

    5. HS

      Wow. That's insane. How were you acquiring customers in the early days? What does that look like in terms of that marketing acquisition funnel?

    6. FP

      Early days and today, it's still the same. It's, m- our main, uh, user acquisition is word of mouth. It's because we have clients that are very happy, they talk to other clients and they bring us more clients. Still today, um, the majority of our leads is word of mouth.

    7. HS

      Huh. Going back to the point of product winning.

    8. FP

      You need a strong product to do that.

    9. HS

      Yeah.

    10. FP

      You need a product that is capable of turning your users into fans.

    11. HS

      What do you think about the kind of adage, the common saying in startups, that, um, speed is the single most important thing in success?

    12. FP

      I agree. I agree, but I see that in s- speed of how you build your assets. For me, it's the product. (laughs) So, uh, it's very important to move forward fast and be, and evolve very quickly and innovate and also build a business, huh? But it's not so much about build your revenue. Uh, at least in my case, the, the revenue grew at 50% per year. It's not huge, but it's still good. Uh, it's just that I did it for 20 years. That's...

    13. HS

      (laughs) That's what leads to such large revenue numbers today.

    14. FP

      Uh, at the end, it's true, it's big. Yeah. (laughs)

    15. HS

      Totally. What was the hardest things in those early days?

    16. FP

      I think it was always a matter of survival. When you don't have cash to pay the employees at the end of the month, it's really hard. When you have to dismiss people you like but you have no other options, it's very hard too.

    17. HS

      Why did you not raise more?

    18. FP

      Um-

    19. HS

      Talk to me about this second fundraise. You said the first one was good, but we sold 30% of the company. (laughs)

    20. FP

      (laughs) It wasn't that good. The second was the same.

    21. HS

      What, what about the second one? How did that go?

    22. FP

      Um...

    23. HS

      And where was the business?

    24. FP

      S- so in every fundraising, the timing is the most important thing. And for me, the timing was not right at the time. (laughs) So we raised seven millions of euro at a valuation of 23 pre-money.

    25. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    26. FP

      So 30 post. And it was a time where we, we needed, we needed money, so-

    27. HS

      How much revenue were we at?

    28. FP

      Don't know exactly, maybe 20, 20 millions.

    29. HS

      20 million in revenue?

    30. FP

      Yeah.

  5. 21:55 – 25:36

    Planning a Business Without a Budget

    1. FP

      already.

    2. HS

      I'm confused. If you don't have a budget, how do you plan your business?

    3. FP

      So do... we do have a budget, but it's the role of the CFO, the finance team, and we don't share that with the teams. So the budget is just about, can we recruit? Yes or no? How much? And that's it. The team leaders, they don't have to worry about that. Even the directors didn't have to worry about that. They only have to worry about making their team become more efficient.

    4. HS

      And how do you measure more efficient?

    5. FP

      You don't need to measure, you know. When you work with the team, and that's what I expect from the team leader is to work with the people, when you work with people, you know who's good on it. You don't need to put a KPI. I'm pretty sure in your teams, you know who's good and who's not just by working with them.

    6. HS

      Totally get you. And so when we think about, like, no forecasts, how does that work?

    7. FP

      So we do have, so the, the, the finance, the CFO has a forecast just to check that the cash is okay. But apart from that, uh, it's more rational thinking. Um, I need to buy this. Is it worth it? Uh, is the investment worth that? If you give budget to people, they will just spend the budget. They, they won't have any responsibility or whatever. If you don't give them budget, they will have to spend responsibly. And so we teach our team leader to be responsible.

    8. HS

      Do you get them to set goals or...

    9. FP

      No.

    10. HS

      No?

    11. FP

      No. What, what kind of goal can you give to a developer? I mean, it's very subjective. Like, develop this task, maybe you can do-

    12. HS

      This task by this timeline?

    13. FP

      Mm. Yeah. But there's... I mean when you are Agile-

    14. HS

      Hit this number of users?

    15. FP

      The tasks change all the time, the features change all the time.

    16. HS

      Hit this number of users, hit this number of activity retention.

    17. FP

      So on some teams, like the salespeople, we have goals, obviously. Um, they have sales target, but, uh, it's an exception. Most of, of the teams don't have.

    18. HS

      Wow.

    19. FP

      I have a story about that.

    20. HS

      Yeah, please.

    21. FP

      (laughs)

    22. HS

      If you got... It's so different. I love it.

    23. FP

      So, uh, when I... So I'm, I'm from Belgium. And we had a... the company in the US was struggling a few... 10 years ago, was struggling to grow. And so I needed to relocate myself and I went there for three years. And when I arrived there, we had three consultant and they were completely overloaded. They are... uh, no, we have 10, two and two, so sorry. But they were completely overloaded. Uh, too many clients and projects. It was a real mess. Um, and the quality was not great of what we were delivering. So I asked one of our best consultant from Belgium to come in the US and help me, uh, restructure that, grow the team, take the most complex project and deliver them. And this guy came, went to the US. And I had a director in the US at that time who told me how... here is how I manage the team. I have KPI about customer satisfaction, time to deliver a project, number of applications deployed. And I told him, "No, no, no, don't, don't do that. Just focus on doing your project." He said, "No, I need this KPI. How can you manage?" So I couldn't convince him to drop his KPIs. And so I waited and... to, to see what happened. So he did his KPI and after three months, the guys who had the worst KPIs was the top expert I, I, I, I get from Belgium to deliver all the projects. And he says, "You see?" And, and when you look at the number, then we understood. The reason why he had the worst KPIs because we gave him all the shitty projects that were complex to deliver.... and so, uh, I mean, things are very subjective. If you put KPIs, it's very difficult to, uh... And, and it was abuse. I mean, uh, it was abuse for the whole team that this guy was the best, yet on the KPIs was the worst. It's just that we gave him the worst projects. (laughs)

    24. HS

      (laughs) Can I ask, when you don't have the titles and you have team leads, does that make it harder to hire really great people? 'Cause great people often want big titles.

    25. FP

      I think it's easier to scale when you don't need, uh, to get the top people. I mean, you just recruit young people, a lot of them, and train them and make them evolve. It's easier than always looking for the best VP of X, the best managers of

  6. 25:36 – 32:25

    Recruiting Young Talent

    1. FP

      X.

    2. HS

      Tell me about how you recruit young people so successfully, 'cause you, you have such a big team now. I mean, in Belgium there's 1,800 you said?

    3. FP

      Yes. 5,000 in total.

    4. HS

      You have 5,000 in total. How do you recruit young people so well?

    5. FP

      So the way we proceed is that we just, uh, assess on the job. So if a d- a developer, we'll ask him to develop. A salesperson, we'll ask him to do a demo and pitch the product and just that. So we don't look at resumes, we, we just make them do some practice and look at it. One thing I noticed is that, um, we also do an IQ test, and it's the second-best predictive KPI, uh, on the s- performance of the person. Um-

    6. HS

      Uh, with the first being how good they are at the core action.

    7. FP

      The first being how good-

    8. HS

      Yeah.

    9. FP

      ... at development you are and so on. Uh, one of the issue I had with the recruiter at, at the time is that, um, if they were talking, like, 30 minutes, 40 minutes on the resume, um, doing the test for two hours, they put the... Or the, the way they assess people is based on how much time they spend on talking on the topic. So if you discuss the, discuss a lot about the resume, then it will impact the way you, you will, uh, qualify the candidate. So I asked them to stop working on the resume because the problem with the logic test is that they just get a number. You did 19% (laughs) or 20, uh, or 90%, uh, but you don't spend time on it. You just get a number. So I had to train them to say, "No, this IQ test is really important. Your description on the resume is not so much, so spend less time o- on that."

    10. HS

      So IQ test is the second-biggest predictor.

    11. FP

      Yes.

    12. HS

      Fascinating. So we get them to do the core action, we get them to do the IQ test. What else is involved in that process? Is that-

    13. FP

      Uh, that's it.

    14. HS

      That's it.

    15. FP

      And our process is, uh, extremely fast. Uh, it's one in- one meeting, and we decide right away. So usually, we recruit within five days. And everything is automated. So you apply online, you can book your, uh, meeting with the interviewer right away from his- t- into his calendar. Then you get a meeting within two or three, four days. Uh, after the meeting, the next day you get an offer.

    16. HS

      Wow.

    17. FP

      And we beat the market because we are fast, just because of that.

    18. HS

      Wow. How often are you right? You know, we're often told that actually good hires are right 50% of the time.

    19. FP

      If you are recruiting smart people, it's quite easy to notice. I mean, if you watch a developer developing for three hours, you probably know at the end if he's good or not.

    20. HS

      We've got core action, how good they are at developing, how good they are at sales, their IQ test as well. That's not a culture fit. You can have smart people who are, you know, politely assholes. Uh, how do you think about that added human component?

    21. FP

      It's really exceptions. The majority of the time, people will fit in your culture. If your pe- your culture is great, um, um... I'll, I will come to it after what we are. I do believe that m- most people match.

    22. HS

      Really?

    23. FP

      Sometimes you have issue, but it's really exceptional. It's probably less than 1%.

    24. HS

      When someone's not great, how fast do you know?

    25. FP

      Quite quickly. Within six months.

    26. HS

      Okay.

    27. FP

      Even before. The problem is for n- younger team leader to, to act, it's no- nobody wants to dismiss someone. (laughs) So it's hard to act, but you quickly notice.

    28. HS

      What are the reasons why younger people struggle when you bring them on?

    29. FP

      Uh, it's always competencies. For me, uh, it's always you will succeed or you will, will never. But it's always, for us, 90... probably more than 90% of the people we dismiss, it's always competencies. Like, "He's not good developer. He doesn't understand sales." Or...

    30. HS

      And we're often characterized... We're both European. I'm a proud Londoner, you're a proud Belgian. People always say that young people in Europe, we don't want to work like they do in the US. We don't have the work ethic.

  7. 32:25 – 39:56

    Fabien’s Relocation to India

    1. FP

      for one year. So it changes.

    2. HS

      You relocated yourself to India for a year.

    3. FP

      Yeah.

    4. HS

      You've got a wife and kids as well.

    5. FP

      Yes, they came with me.

    6. HS

      They came with you. (laughs)

    7. FP

      That time because when I was to the US it was... (laughs) because it was not that easy.

    8. HS

      How was that? You're in Gujarat.

    9. FP

      Yes.

    10. HS

      Yeah. How, how was going to India for you, packing up with your two kids and wife?

    11. FP

      Uh, I loved it. I mean, India is an experience. It's colorful, it's noisy, it's, uh, full of activity.

    12. HS

      Why was India not growing?

    13. FP

      You know, when you grow a company from one to ten, it's a challenge, real challenge. But when you grow to 10 to 100 people, it's a different challenge. And then from 100 to 1,000, it's still a different challenge. The director there was, uh, one of our first employer started with him when he was a student. He grew the company to 200 people, and then it struggled there. The, it's been seven years since the company only had seven, 200 employees, and it couldn't grow. And the guy was good, it's just that he needed some help. And, uh, so I came there to help and we grow to 800 people. Still the same team, so it's still the, the same managers. So I replaced nobody because they were all very good. It's just that they needed a little bit of help.

    14. HS

      I love that. Okay, and so they needed a little bit of help. Where's India at now for you?

    15. FP

      Uh, yeah, now we have 800 employees. We grew contracts. So when I arrived there, we were signing 16 new clients per month. It's nothing. (laughs) Uh, and now we are around 800 per month. And it's growing, uh, it's, uh, it continues to grow, so...

    16. HS

      If I were to ask you the challenges going from one to 10, 10 to 100, and 100 to 500, or whatever you want that number to be.

    17. FP

      Yes.

    18. HS

      What... how would you describe them?

    19. FP

      So for one to 10 is about, uh, building act- the business. So it could be the product, the service offer. It's all about you and the team working on improving the business and the product. 10 to 100 is the time where, um, your job change. As a founder, you, you start to have middle managers, and so the culture is not you anymore. It's, it's the middle manager and the way they behave with the people. So you spend way more time communicating to ensure that, uh, the culture is, uh, aligned, that everybody's aligned so well. Um, going to above 1,000 and more, it's all about scalability, to make things super smooth and clean so that you keep growing.

    20. HS

      When we speak about the team, I actually spoke to one of your investors. I think it was one of your investors or team members. I can't remember which one said this, but they said that you said, "I hire people for being world-class at something. The flip side is that they are catastrophic at other things." Can you talk to me about that?

    21. FP

      If you look for people that are perfect in everything, you will get people that are average in everything. I mean, if you want people who speak multiple language, who is a good developer, who is a good communicator, with... probably is going to be average. So if you dismiss people because they are bad on something, expect to have average on everything. If you want people who transform your company, they have to be extremely good on something. And for that, you will have to accept their weaknesses. So I train our, um, recruiters to look for the strengths and accept some of the weaknesses. Some you can't, but... (laughs)

    22. HS

      (laughs)

    23. FP

      Uh, it's important to not look for people. So when you discuss aft- the aftermath of the interview is more about, uh, how is he a very good developer or is he a very good something, and not about, "I think he doesn't speak that, that language very well," or, "He doesn't do that." You focus on where is good rather than weakness.

    24. HS

      Are there unacceptable versus acceptable weaknesses? Or is it just how good your strength is?

    25. FP

      Um, for me, it's, it really depends on the departments. I have departments that are extremely flexible. They, they can accommodate anybody. (laughs) You are not social, they will put you in a separate-

    26. HS

      (laughs)

    27. FP

      (laughs) ... office and so on, that's fine. Um, so it really depends on the context.

    28. HS

      What have been your biggest hiring mistakes, Fabien?

    29. FP

      It's not so much about hiring, but it's about firing. I'm always too late, like a lot of people, I guess.

    30. HS

      How do you think about improving that moving forwards?

  8. 39:56 – 47:05

    Competing Against Big Tech Giants

    1. FP

    2. HS

      (laughs) can I ask you? You mentioned there, you're around Google, you're around, you know, Facebook and all the big players in San Francisco. You are in intensely competitive markets. I interviewed... this week I interviewed two people, Fabian at Odoo and Marc Benioff at Salesforce.

    3. FP

      (laughs)

    4. HS

      Um, you compete with the biggest companies in the world. How do you think about competition?

    5. FP

      Uh, I feel like we have no competition, which, uh... you... we have plenties of competitors, but I don't feel like we have competition. I will... I'll explain why. Um, so we are a suite of business apps. Whatever you need, we have it, like a CRM, accounting, logistic. So, we do everything that companies need. And we do it extremely affordable. You start with 20 euro, it's 20 euro per user and ge- you get all these apps. Nobody did that. Nobody succeeded. On the market, you have two types of market, you have the large players like SAP and Microsoft, they do several application, but it's shitty, it's slow, it's expensive and people are not happy using it. And then you have the small player like Slack, Mailchimp, uh, to send email, Trello, Asana and so on. They do one thing very well, so they acquire a lot of user, but they only do one thing. Nobody succeeded to do the benefits of both, have all the applications that the company need and being extremely simple and affordable. So, for me, it's more about cracking something that nobody succeeded to crack, rather than competing against others.

    6. HS

      (laughs) How would you feel if someone said, "Oh, we're with Odoo because they're the cheapest"?

    7. FP

      Um, yeah, it's true. (laughs) It's part of my value to try to be the cheapest. If I can decrease the price, I would do it right away because I want to commoditize the market to make technology affordable. Obviously, I would prefer that the-

    8. HS

      It goes against all lessons though. Like, Marc Andreessen, very famous investor, always says... I mean, literally we released the show today and Marc Andreessen says, um, "If you want a small company, charge small prices. You want a medium company, medium prices. Big company, big prices."

    9. FP

      Yes. In a way it's true, but if you want to commoditize the market and have every company on your software, you have to have a very small price.

    10. HS

      Do you think we're in a race-

    11. FP

      I mean, what's the price of Google Workspace or Microsoft Office? It's not a very high price, but everybody, e- everybody use them.

    12. HS

      They do, but they monetize those businesses with other cash cows, which is obviously, you know, search for Google and most predominantly. We'll see what that is moving forwards.

    13. FP

      Yeah.

    14. HS

      But, like, how do you think about your ultimate cash cow if we're doing commoditization to the bottom?

    15. FP

      But I think... why is that important? I mean, we don't have cash issues. We are growing since, since 2014, we didn't raise money anymore. We are profitable. So, why would I charge more if I have all the money I need to accelerate?

    16. HS

      Because you are... I don't know if your revenues are public. Um-

    17. FP

      Uh, f- it's 550 millions this year.

    18. HS

      550 million this year. Great. Fantastic. Um, wow. Fuck! I saw a deck of yours our team got from, like, 2023 and it was, like, 200 million or whatever it was.

    19. FP

      Yeah, we grew by 50%.

    20. HS

      Yeah. Wow, okay. Fuck. Um, okay, but 550. If you want to get to be a $100 billion business, say, you need what, 10 billion in revenue?

    21. FP

      First, I don't care about the valuation and I, uh, I do care about the revenue because cash is a way to finance what I need to do, um, but valuation is not important for me.

    22. HS

      Why?

    23. FP

      Um, I don't care. I mean, what I want to do is to develop Odoo, that's the thing I would like to do. I, I don't care about money. I don't need money.

    24. HS

      (laughs)

    25. FP

      ... so (laughs) why should I care about valuation when-

    26. HS

      You have to understand, Fabien, this show is very strange for me. (laughs)

    27. FP

      (laughs)

    28. HS

      You were like, "We don't hire, like, VPs, I don't care about valuation, duh-luh-luh." Okay, great. Uh-

    29. FP

      Uh, it's a, it's a good side effect to have a good value, but it's, it's not what should drive you. I mean, it's way more important to deliver software that transform companies, who have an impact to your clients.

    30. HS

      Do you think we build companies completely wrong today? 'Cause all I talk about with founders is, what revenue do you need to get to, to raise your series B? What revenue do you need to get to, to get your series C?

  9. 47:05 – 55:46

    Lessons in Building a Sales Team

    1. FP

    2. HS

      You spoke earlier about your sales team. Sales teams are really hard to build. Building a go-to-market function is tough. What have been your biggest lessons on building the sales team effectively, Fabien?

    3. FP

      How do you recruit the VP of sales? Or the ... Not, for us it was not recruiting, but promoting.

    4. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    5. FP

      And, uh, for me it was clearly a, a leader, someone who trains the other, who can explain everything. So that's important. About scaling the sales team, for us, it's all about the product. We really teach them about doing demos and ... a lot. They, they do two demos per day, and then once they do that for a few weeks (laughs) they, they start to become good.

    6. HS

      Two demos per day?

    7. FP

      Yes.

    8. HS

      When the product is so cheap, what's the ACV, the average contract value?

    9. FP

      It's, um, s- ... $3,500 A- ARR.

    10. HS

      $3,500 ARR? That's not enough to justify outbound.

    11. FP

      We don't do outbound.

    12. HS

      You don't do outbound?

    13. FP

      We only do, um, inbound. (laughs) Uh, y- yeah, we are not typical, uh ... (laughs)

    14. HS

      W- why do we not do outbound even now at half a billion in revenue?

    15. FP

      So to be fair, we, we started. We started a few months ago. Uh, but it's only a few people, I think, 30 people at the company.

    16. HS

      So this was pr- before. Up to half a billion in revenue, you were only doing inbound leads.

    17. FP

      Yes.

    18. HS

      Wow.

    19. FP

      But we, we get a lot of leads, though.

    20. HS

      Okay. And so why did we decide (laughs) to do outbound now?

    21. FP

      So as we are getting very mature, now we are starting to launch, uh, applications per industry. So we have an applications for the plumber, for the restaurant, for (laughs) every industries. We launched 50 industries. And that's easier, uh, uh, with the onboard strategy. But we are just testing, and we have 30 people out of something like 1,800 sales.

    22. HS

      Wow. Okay. Um, how did you determine which industries to go into? You mentioned, uh, plumbing and restaurant.

    23. FP

      It's, it's a matter of product-market fit. So we have the product we have, and, uh, this product already answers a lot of industries. So we started where we are good.

    24. HS

      (laughs) This is the most unique story I've done. Um, d- tell me, where else do most other companies fail as they grow? We've touched on a lot. We touched on CEOs, we touched on hire.

    25. FP

      Uh, they de-focus. A lot of companies, they de-focus as they grow.

    26. HS

      I'm not being rude. Is that not what you've done?

    27. FP

      No, we only have one product, one way to deliver the service, only three big departments. All our companies everyb- where, operate the same way. Our product is only 400,000 lines of code. So even though it looks like it's complex because it does a lot of things, it's still extremely simple. Um, no, I, I still feel that we are, we are very simple company.

    28. HS

      Okay. How do they defocus then?

    29. FP

      Oh, they launch new products, new departments. They have marketing ideas of X. Uh, they, they spend time meeting clients, and the press, and (laughs) everything. When you start to have m- managers, and manager o- of managers, and team leaders, they all wants to do something. They all have ideas and the complexities that there is like a dark force that push everyone to, to complexify the company. And to keep your company simple you always have to fight back against that.

    30. HS

      My favorite is brainstorming meetings. Can I ask you, when you look back on this incredible journey, what did you do that you wish you hadn't done?

  10. 55:46 – 59:40

    Salesforce’s Future

    1. HS

      is. How do you think about the future of... uh, I, I have, I had spoke to you, I had Benioff on the show. Everyone is saying that Salesforce is the company to be disrupted. Uh, what do you think about the future of Salesforce?

    2. FP

      I, I think, uh, same than SAP. Most of the- these companies have still a good way to... I mean, you... they, they will, they will continue. But other challengers like us will grow much faster.

    3. HS

      Okay. Do you think agents help or hurt you?

    4. FP

      Yes, but I also think it's overrated. Uh, it's a mix of both. There is plenties of good use case in AI, but there are also plenties of o- overrating in AI too.

    5. HS

      What's overrate it?

    6. FP

      Um, like, uh, s-, uh, for Marc Benioff, the, um, uh...

    7. HS

      Agentforce?

    8. FP

      Yeah, Agentforce that they presented during Dreamforce. The use case, like, you, I don't know if you have seen the video, there was a use case on the keynote where it showed that you can, uh, call a, a help desk and ask, uh, information about your order and then change your order. I mean, for that, you have a very good UX, a, a good portal when you go, you click on the, on the button from your email and then change your order and all that. It's way more efficient. I'm pretty sure that if I call this help desk with my shitty, uh, English accent-

    9. HS

      (laughs)

    10. FP

      ... he won't recognize me (laughs) or he will ask me a cas- question to identify me that are very complex to answer too. So, in a lot of way, UX, having a very, very good product, is more efficient than AI. But there are also a lot of use case where AI is, is good. I'm not saying it's bad, for, for instance, in accounting, it transformed the market. We have now 98.5% recognition on the invoice and bills and everything, which is better than the humans. And that transformed the market. Now, you- the accountants, they don't need to record that in the system anymore. They just validate.

    11. HS

      How do you think about integrating AI most effectively into Odoo today and moving forward?

    12. FP

      I think it... you have to start with the problem. A lot of people start with the solution. "I want to do AI." That's the, (laughs) that's the solution. But if you start from the problem, you look where people are wasting time, where they are inefficient, then you get to good use case. And from this problem, what is the best solution? Sometimes it's just UX. Uh, very well done features that make them save a lot of time. Sometimes it's AI, sometimes it's different algorithm. Uh, AI is one of the tool to improve, uh, your software, but there are a lot of them.

    13. HS

      Do you think we'll go through an AI winter in the next few years where the ROI that's been promised isn't quite delivered in the timeframe that's expected?

    14. FP

      It's gonna be interesting. I don't know, I'm, uh... but it's gonna be interesting. But for sure there will be also very disruptive use case. So, even though it- that happens, we'll, we'll have... we will win a lot of things.

    15. HS

      Cass, do you have a board for your company?

    16. FP

      Yes, five people.

    17. HS

      Do you like it?

    18. FP

      (laughs) It's one of the, the only things that, uh, I don't like to do presentations in general.

    19. HS

      Why?

    20. FP

      Um, I prefer to work on the product, uh, improve, uh, marketing department or the salespeople rather than writing PowerPoint. Having said that, um, yes, uh, there was time where I didn't like it, and, but now it's, it's, it's good because we have good investors.

    21. HS

      (laughs) That's amazing. When you look at your own CEO-ship, where do you need to improve? And where would you like to get better, spend more time?

    22. FP

      I think I, I don't want to be older. Uh, as time goes on, (laughs) I feel like I'm not as smart as I was before. Uh, and I'm slowing down a little bit, and I don't like that.

    23. HS

      Would you say that you're also the CPO, the chief product officer?

    24. FP

      Yes.

    25. HS

      Yeah.

    26. FP

      Yeah.

    27. HS

      Are the best companies...

    28. FP

      But I'm also working mar- I mean, the head of marketing. I'm also working a lot with the other departments, service department. So, I'm doing a lot of things.

    29. HS

      Which is the least natural for you?

    30. FP

      I'm a generalist, so I think I'm good in a lot of things. Maybe what we are doing now. (laughs)

  11. 59:40 – 1:08:17

    Odoo’s Roadmap to $100B

    1. HS

      good at this. When we think about Odoo becoming a $100 billion company, I know you said you didn't care about the valuation, but just-

    2. FP

      Yeah.

    3. HS

      ... like, what does Odoo need to do to become $100 billion?

    4. FP

      Continue doing what we do today.

    5. HS

      Grow 50%.

    6. FP

      Not, not defocusing, innovating year after year with the same pace, uh, growing the company 50% per year while keeping the culture.

    7. HS

      When do you really need to go into enterprise?

    8. FP

      Uh, we are doing enterprise now.

    9. HS

      So you're taking clients from SAP-

    10. FP

      Yes, a lot.

    11. HS

      ... the biggest and the biggest?

    12. FP

      Yes. Thanks for, uh, SAP HANA which is a disaster, nobody wants to go. So, that opens the door to new entrants like us.

    13. HS

      Love that. Do you need to build an entirely different company if you go into the enterprise?

    14. FP

      Yeah, I had to create a different department. The methodology, um, the way we pitch and, and we sell is, is different. Having said that, we kept part of our culture. Even though it's a different department, we are... we... they are still part of our company. So, I believe the-

    15. HS

      How's it different, first? I'm just too interested.

    16. FP

      So, um, this market is owned by service companies. So, when you want to buy an ERP, it costs millions in service and implementation and everything. As a software vendor, the, the thing I, I want to do is to lower the service as much as I can. I'm not interested in service revenues. It's only 18% of our revenues. But service is necessary. You need to deliver and put the client in production and everything. And because we try to sell the least service possible, that changed a lot in our implementation methodologies. And so we developed methodologies over the time that are extremely efficient, not focusing too much, and that bypass, uh, some of the heaviness of traditional methodologies.

    17. HS

      Love that. What was the biggest challenge in building out enterprise?

    18. FP

      ... for us, it was the culture. There is something funny when we start working with a large client. Usually, they, when we do the demos and they see the product, they are dreaming. They are everybody's ex- excited. But I know that the first one, two or three months are difficult because there, it's going to be a culture clash. For inst- um, our teams are extremely efficient, direct. They, uh, it sometimes doesn't work very well with c- with the culture of large companies. They, they just want to deliver and move forward and, and um, we sometimes have a culture clash within the first or second month. And then the, both companies align themself and then the project gets smooth. But we often have that.

    19. HS

      I, I, I love that. How do you think about your culture more broadly? I think, you know, company culture is one of the hardest things. And you said before to me that it matters more than processes.

    20. FP

      Yes. Yeah, oh, ob- obviously. Um, so the culture for me at Todoo is three thing, at least for the people. It's, uh, autonomy, responsibilities and evolution. I think everybody says that.

    21. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    22. FP

      But for us it's true and for a lot of companies it's not true.

    23. HS

      Autonomy, responsibility and evolution?

    24. FP

      Yes.

    25. HS

      Autonomy, meaning everyone can make decisions?

    26. FP

      Yes. And they, and you give them the authority to do it, and the, and the, and the tools to do it.

    27. HS

      Even one-way door decisions?

    28. FP

      Yes. But people are smart. If they are not sure, they will still ask. So, uh, they can decide whatever they want, but you know that they are smart or they, they won't do things that are against the company.

    29. HS

      What was the second one?

    30. FP

      Responsibilities. People must take the responsibility. And young people, they, they are not responsible by default. Um, school, the education system kill that. So, we have to train them (laughs) um, uh, of deciding and, um ...

  12. 1:08:17 – 1:13:26

    Quick-Fire Round

    1. FP

    2. HS

      Listen, I- I've so enjoyed this. I- I wanna move to a quick fire round. So I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

    3. FP

      Yes.

    4. HS

      Do you think investors add value?

    5. FP

      Um, it's hard to say, but it's very difficult for some ... They, they, they will participate a few hours per month, like two hours per month, four hours per month, to be as deep as you in the business. So I do believe they add value to pinpoint elements, to pick, to, (laughs) to challenge you. But at the end, the solution always have to come from you. So they give other point of view, they challenge you, but, um, they, they will never tell you what to do. At least if you're th- thinking ... If you've, if you, if you treat them that way, you might do a lot of mistakes.

    6. HS

      What have you changed your mind on most in the last 12 months?

    7. FP

      I changed my mind a lot. It's a lot about product features. (laughs)

    8. HS

      Cool. What is it? Name one.

    9. FP

      We argue a lot about the product features, but it's detail, it's complex to explain. It's usually small details.

    10. HS

      (laughs) Uh, who do you not have on the board that you would most like to have on the board?

    11. FP

      Um, don't care. As I said, the board is not the most important thing for me.

    12. HS

      As, a- as an advisor.

    13. FP

      For me, the executive committee and the team leaders I'm working with are way more important than the board. And as d- ... I shouldn't say that. (laughs)

    14. HS

      No, it's fine. No one listens. It's fine. No one listens.

    15. FP

      Because at the end, it's the guys who do the things, um, and they challenge me even more than the board, so.

    16. HS

      You can be CEO of any other company for a day, which company do you choose?

    17. FP

      Oh, the government.

    18. HS

      The government?

    19. FP

      Yeah. I have to be president then. (laughs)

    20. HS

      Of Belgium?

    21. FP

      Yes.

    22. HS

      What would you change?

    23. FP

      Oh, education, uh, economy.

    24. HS

      Why is education broken?

    25. FP

      It's s- very slow. Uh, they don't have good expectation on the, on the kids. They're ... They don't ... In, in, in Belgium, they don't even teach, uh, IT, no computer course. Uh, my kids were in India. In India, at 11, he has cur- ... He has lectures on, um, entrepreneurship, on leadership, on Python development, chess, and things like that. In Belgium, we have none of this. We only have math, French, and physics, biology.

    26. HS

      Wow. Is Indian education better than Belgium?

    27. FP

      Um, no. Um, so you ... In Belgium, all the schools are, uh, average good. In India, you have from the very worst, very bad to very, very good ones. So the range is m- ... Is, is, is very d- ... Is much broader.

    28. HS

      Do you pay-

    29. FP

      But you have extremely good schools in India.

    30. HS

      Do you pay people differently depending on geography?

Episode duration: 1:15:33

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