The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
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Odoo bans recurring meetings to avoid traditional managers
“I forbid the recurring meeting at the company. They can do meetings. But on the job, or for specific tasks, or trainings, but not recurring meeting. I mean, recurring meeting is a way to manage people, and we try to avoid managers. We want team leaders that wo…”
Odoo will displace SAP within 10 to 20 years
“First, I think it's just a matter of time. I think I don't know how they can survive to what's coming in from them. We have so much advance, years in our head, we are stealing so much clients to them, that it's just a matter of time for me. But it's gonna take…”
Engineering managers must be the best developer on their team
“There is no way you can Make a team of developers become a better developer if you are not the best developer of the team yourself.”
SAP's S/4HANA ERP product is a disaster, says Odoo CEO
“Thanks for Sapphorana, which is a disaster. Nobody wants to go. So that opens the door to new entrants like us.”
IQ tests are the second best predictor of job performance
“One thing I noticed is that we also do an IQ test, and it's the second best predictive KPI on the performance of the person.”
Odoo's product is years ahead of Microsoft and SAP
“I think our product is years ahead of the competition. There is no way they can do what we do.”
Rejecting the MVP model drove Odoo's ultimate success
“It was very risky, because it took time to monetize and get to something that I could sell and everything, but now that I am looking back, it's probably what Medo do today. It's because I thought about the big picture, everything's smooth together, and it's no…”
Odoo ignores resumes and evaluates candidates strictly on practical tests
“So we don't look at resumes, we just make them do some practice and look at it.”
Reinvesting personal funds in Odoo because it reliably returns 50% yearly
“I still if I have money, I don't have a lot of money in my bank account, but if I have money, I will buy or do shares. Even more. I mean, it's the best investment I can do, so. It's purely financial. I don't know another company that can give me 50% year after…”
Opening Odoo's San Francisco office was a mistake
“Retrospectively, if I would have opened it elsewhere, I would have preferred, yes.”
Hiring well-rounded candidates yields average talent
“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 languages, who is a good developer, who is a good communicator, Probably it's gonna be average. So if you d…”
Scaling is easier by training young talent than hiring VPs
“I think it's easier to scale when you don't need 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 at the best VP of X, the best managers of X.”
Odoo never hires managers or directors externally
“Yes, we never recruit managers and directors. Never ever, even when we reopen a subsidiary in a different country.”
Odoo will never sell to an industrial buyer
“We will never sell. At least industrial exit. So it's clear.”
Management software market will consolidate to two or three players
“I do believe that management software will follow the same trends. Today, there are plenty of factors. But in the future, such technology will be so will be a commodity, like so much mature that there will be one, two, or three players that will have the world…”
Odoo allows employees to choose their own job titles
“So on titles that to do, we have something funny is that everybody chooses title, and some people take funny titles, other people say director of X we don't care. We print the business card, they decide when the, what the title they want us to put, because I w…”
Odoo grew revenue 50% annually for 20 straight years
“So if you look at the past 20 years, we basically grew at 50% per year, year after year, every year.”
Doubts about an employee signal it is already too late
“I keep saying to myself, when there is a doubt, there is no doubt. You know, we are entrepreneurs, and as an entrepreneur, we are always optimistic. We want things to make it work, we think it's gonna be better, and if, even if it doesn't work with someone, we…”
Odoo has been profitable without outside funding since 2014
“We are growing since, since, since 2014. We didn't raise money anymore. We are profitable.”
Odoo and ERP challengers will grow much faster than Salesforce and SAP
“I think same as SAP, most of the, these companies have still a good way to, I mean, you, they will continue. But other challenges like us will grow much faster.”
Most teams at Odoo operate without performance goals
“So on some teams, like the salespeople, we have goals, obviously they have sales target, but it's an exception. Most of the teams don't have.”
Odoo switched to open core with 80% free features
“So I had to do another pivot in the business model, and that time I switched to an open core. Business model, where 80% of the features are open source and 20% are for a fee.”
Switching Odoo to open core allowed a 10x dev team expansion
“When I decided to switch to an open core business model and say, it's not only, it's not anymore 100% open source, it's only 80% open source and 20% for free. I could 10 times the development team, so now I'm contributing way more to open source than before.”
Running Odoo is easier at 5,000 employees than at 100
“I think my life is easier now than it was when we were 100.”
Odoo has one product, three departments, and 400,000 lines of code
“We only have one product. One way to deliver the service. Only three big departments. All our companies everywhere operate the same way. Our product is only 400,000 lines of code”
Burning more money on marketing would not help Odoo much
“I couldn't burn much more in marketing, but I don't think it would help a lot.”
KPIs fail because performance evaluation is inherently subjective
“And so, I mean, things are very subjective. If you put KPIs, it's very difficult to and it was obvious, I mean, it was obvious for the whole team that this guy was the best. Yet, on the KPIs, it was the worst. It's just that we gave him the worst project.”
Odoo nearly went bankrupt trying to remain purely open source
“And I fought to keep this open source business model, but To the point where we were close to bankruptcy, so I had to switch.”
Odoo keeps financial budgets restricted to CFO and finance team
“So 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, or much, and that's it. The team leaders, they don't have to worry about that. Even the direc…”
Service revenue accounts for only 18% of Odoo's business
“As a software vendor, the thing 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.”
Odoo executives took out loans to purchase shares every funding round
“Every round we were buying shares. And to the point where we get a big loan because we don't have money. We are just simple personnel, so we get a big loan just to acquire shares and at every round.”
Management layers create a constant dark force toward company complexity
“When you start to have managers and managers of managers and team leaders, they all want to do something. They all have ideas and the complexity is that there is like a dark force that push everyone to complexify the company. And to keep your company simple, y…”
Odoo built its inbound engine before testing outbound with 30 reps
“So to be fair, we started a few months ago but it's only a few people, I think, 30 people at the company.”
Over 90% of Odoo dismissals stem from competency, not culture fit
“It's always competencies. For me it's always you will succeed or you will never, but it's always, for us, 90, probably more than 90% of the people we dismiss, it's always competencies.”
Odoo AI reaches 98.5% accuracy on invoice recognition, outperforming humans
“For instance, in accounting, it transforms the market. We have no 98 per five percent recognition on invoice and bills and everything. Which is better than the humans, and that transformed the market.”
Odoo beats competitors in recruiting solely through hiring speed
“And we beat the market because we are fast, just because of that.”
Odoo CEO splits time 50/50 between R&D and internal processes
“50% of my time is in the product. So research and development with the product owners and the developers. And the other 50% is improving your internal processes.”
Odoo lets new local directors choose international expansion cities
“And we always proceed that way. We first find the person and only after the person will define where we go.”
Odoo scaled its Indian team from 200 to 800 without replacing managers
“So I came there to help, and we grow to 800 people. Still the same team, so it's still the same managers. So I replaced nobody, because they were all very good. It's just that they needed a little bit of help.”
Odoo completed a €500M secondary deal at a €5B valuation
“So it was five hundred millions of euros at a five billion valuation. It was Summit Partners, one of our earlier investors who sold to Sequoia Capital, BlackRock, Mubadala, and Capital G.”
At 10 to 100 employees, middle managers define company culture
“10 to 100 is the time where your job change. As a founder, you start to have middle managers, and so the culture is not you anymore. It's the middle manager and the way they behave with the people. So you spend way more time communicating to ensure that the cu…”
Fabien Pinckaers retains 57% ownership of Odoo at $5B valuation
“57%. So I only did two fundraising, very bad valuation, but I still kept the majority of the shares.”
Odoo managers have never sold company shares
“All the managers are always buying shares at Odo. We never sold shares.”
Odoo completed $500M secondary transaction with excess buyer demand
“We just did this five hundred million transaction, and we had more acquires than people selling, so.”
Odoo recruits within five days using single-meeting automated process
“And our process is extremely fast. So it's 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 meeting with the interviewer right away from his, into his calendar. The…”