Planet Odoo

The Odoo journey I ft. Fabien Pinckaers

January 30, 2023 Odoo Season 1 Episode 1
Planet Odoo
The Odoo journey I ft. Fabien Pinckaers
Show Notes Transcript

If you risked bankruptcy for ten years, would you have kept fighting for your project?

For this first episode of Planet Odoo, we sit down with Fabien Pinckaers, founder of Odoo, to chat about his inspiring entrepreneurial journey from a young student to the CEO of a multi-billion dollars company.

His passion for helping SMEs and making the life of employees easier never ceases to drive him to support his life mission further. The road to success was bumpy and full of challenges, risks, and pivoting moments. But Fabien always believed in his projects while making the necessary decisions when needed. His business vision, dedication, and transparency created a firing combo that allowed Odoo to become the company it is today.

Join us and explore how Odoo became one of the market’s most successful business app suites and how the person behind the company made it all happen as he shares his recipe for achievement. 

Whether you are a business owner, entrepreneur, customer, partner, or anyone interested in the Odoo business and technology, this podcast is made for you!

Don’t forget to support us by clicking the subscribe button, leaving a review, and sharing your favorite episode!

Interested in Odoo? Connect with us!

Concept and realization : Ludvig Auvens, Manuèle Robin, Cécile Collart

Recording and mixing : Lèna Noiset, Judith Moriset

Host: Olivier Colson

Olivier Colson:

What does Odoo mean? How did you choose that name?

Fabien Pinckaers:

You want the real answer or the fake one we did for the public?

Olivier Colson:

I would like both, haha!

Fabien Pinckaers:

The reason why we are so efficient today is because we had to fight for ten years without money, trying to do things with nothing. And that forced us who we are today. One of the cool activities I started was no more Viagra dot com. It was an anti-spam and anti-virus.

Olivier Colson:

It's a nice name. Very nice name.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Our challenge is our community. So today there is 100,000 people living on the do. When you open source, you cannot hide. I mean, people have access to the source code. They can try it. And so if it's bad, they will notice it.

Olivier Colson:

Hi, Odooers! Welcome to this first episode of Planet Odoo, the podcast that will be your check-in for all things about tech, innovation, business, and of course, Odoo. I am Olivier Colson, a developer at Odoo and your host for this podcast. To start this show the right way, Today we decided to tell you about Fabien Pinckaers, founder and CEO of Odoo. With him, we will uncover the secrets and anecdotes behind his success and journey as an entrepreneur. We will dig into all the ideas and innovations that made Odoo one of the most valuable Belgian unicorns, and if Fabien agrees, he may share some good business practices with us. Hello, Fabien.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Hello Olivier.

Olivier Colson:

So we all know you. We've seen you everywhere and in everything that is related to Odoo. I mean, it's pretty normal since you're the founder, you're the CEO of the company. So you've already given a lot of interviews. But today, we'll try to go a bit more into the anecdotes and really the behind-the-scenes of what Odoo is, what is so special about the company, and really give details about all of that, if that's okay.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, let's do it.

Olivier Colson:

Okay. So I suggest we start with your entrepreneur journey and your history, and really, how did you become what you are now, and how did you have the idea of building a company like that? Where did it start?

Fabien Pinckaers:

Actually, I didn't have an idea. I had plenty of ideas. Most of them didn't work, and one of them worked better than the other. It all started as a student. I was a developer. I developed a lot of things. I developed e-commerce websites, virus, antivirus, games. I had the online shop with Linux derivated stuff, and I did plenty of things. And at some point, one of the things worked better than the other. It was management software. I started with the art market auctioneers, antique dealers, art galleries. And then I started to do the website and then the management system. But the art market is very bad. They don't have money. So at some point I... I Was happy, I mean, I was as a student, I had a revenue like €10,000 per month, which was okay for a student. Yeah. Um, but still it was a very complex and hard market to grow in. So I used this market to enter and develop what I wanted to do, management software. So I develop accounting, inventory, generic stuff. And then, at some point, I stopped all the other activities and say, okay, let's, let's try to refocus only on the time it was called Tiny ERP, but it's Odoo now.

Olivier Colson:

It's very interesting because I don't know if everybody is aware in the in the audience, but you're a developer, you told it yourself, you developed it.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Not anymore. But let's say I still have a mindset. Yeah.

Olivier Colson:

And I think it makes a difference because, I mean, the way you're explaining it is pretty appealing to people like me because I'm a developer.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah. And actually, we worked together.

Olivier Colson:

And you did it because you like the product actually, and not just because you wanted to do a company. So you did it because you had to. If I get you well.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, I always wanted... I still remember, you know, Graham from Y Combinator. I still remember one of the blogs he wrote like 20 years ago where he said, "if you want to succeed in something in life, you have to fix a big problem, like the kind of problem where you need a decade to fix it." And clearly, small and mid-sized companies are totally inefficient. People suffer from that. They have a lot of difficulties. They have to re-encode data. They don't have access to data. So it's really a really complex problem because companies have marketing, inventory, accounting, and plenty of different activities. And so what I liked about this idea is that you could have a big impact, and it's something where over the next decades, it's going to be always fun because it's so many things to fix.

Olivier Colson:

And you realized that there were a lot of things that were inefficient in companies, and you saw it. What was your experience telling yourself, Wow, it could be better?

Fabien Pinckaers:

I think at the beginning it's not like I had a vision. I had no vision at all. I was just serving one client and then another one and then another one. And he told me, Oh, I have this issue and this issue. And I started to fix issues in companies one by one, and then by improving and transforming a lot of companies, I started to see patterns and see a lot of things where, to give you some example, take human resources or recruitment. If you sit to a recruiter next to her or him, you will see that 60% of their email is about scheduling meetings. Are you available for an interview? Rescheduling the guy is not there, and so on. So 60% of the emails are about scheduling meetings, I mean, who wants to do that? It's super boring, right? Like, uh, 60% of your time is sending. Oh, he's not available anymore. We have to reschedule. Today, you can screw a meeting on a click. Just check the agenda and schedule meetings. And so people suffer from that. I mean, it's everyone wants to be efficient. Everyone wants to contribute to the community, and every employee wants to contribute to the company. But when your time is doing 60% of administrative tasks, just scheduling meetings, you do feel not good at work.

Olivier Colson:

The value you're bringing is not that huge, or you don't feel it like this.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, you could contribute way more. And so I started to fix that. Okay, let's automate the meeting of a recruiter. And then I did one by one, and I say "I," but we are a big team. We started to fix issues as we saw them one by one and now that we have this big picture, e see a lot of patents that are the same in a lot of different SMEs. And now the vision become clear clearer than at the beginning, but still it's always helping people do more in less time, helping employees to be more efficient. That has always been the thing that drives us.

Olivier Colson:

That's interesting because we kept the same way of tackling issues one by one. And so that's pretty interesting to see that it was like this from the beginning. So, of course, it's not the same issues, It's not in the same way, and it's not the same customers. But the mindset, I would say, stays the same.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, I think it's one of the things we succeeded at Odoo is that when companies grow, they start to defocus themselves. You always have managers who want to launch this activity. That activity, that department opened this country, I don't know. But most large companies defocus a lot themselves and become bloated and very complex and so on. One thing we succeeded at Odoo is to stay focused and staying focused for 20 years. It's kind of a challenge. And so even though we are not so small anymore with 2500 people, we are extremely focused on the client. We are still all focused on doing things that matter, that help people do more in less time. And we are not focusing on servicing or things that are not that much valuable.

Olivier Colson:

Okay. I would like to go back to the first customers you were talking about. So we're talking about art sellers. Art dealers. Are they still using or do those first customers, are they still there now?

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah. I'm always afraid to see, uh, open ERP version 4.1 running since years on a server that nobody has access to. Unfortunately, they are still using it and it runs.

Olivier Colson:

And suddenly, they want to migrate.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah. And it's, it's impressive because think about it. The same software run for 15 years. Yeah. So that means that there were no memory leak. No memory leak, nothing, because nobody managed these servers, and it's still running. So even at the time, it was already quite efficient.

Olivier Colson:

How did you get in touch with those first customers? Because as a student, it's something I would say a lot of people don't really know where to start, this kind of thing. Where did you get the contact? How did you do that?

Fabien Pinckaers:

It depends on which activities. One of the cool activities I started was no more Viagra dot com. It was an anti-spam and anti-virus.

Olivier Colson:

And nice name, very nice name.

Fabien Pinckaers:

It was super cool. So you had an IMAP or pop server to get your email. At the time, Gmail didn't exist so and so you just added dot no more Viagra dot com to your pop server on your IMAP server. And then, all the email came to my server where filtered, and you only receive the right ones. The idea was pretty cool. The onboarding was extremely efficient. You didn't have to sign up or anything. Just add a domain name on your server and infiltrate the spam and the viruses. And then I went to deploy that. I printed four folders like I think it was 10,000 folders that I wanted to distribute in Leuven and in every student's room. I never did it. And I did that for nothing. And I had zero clients. That's one of the first. For the Linux stuff, I promoted it online. There were large communities of open source fans because I was a lot in the open source communities and things like that. Everything I developed was open source. I'm still today passionated about open source and then I started with communities I knew and so I sold t-shirts with Linux logo printed on it and it worked online because of these communities. For Odoo, the first management software I sold, I was pretty young. I was 13 years old. It was friends of my father, and so they wanted something. I said okay, I'll do it. And then I did a few friends of my father, and then I did my father, who was an auction house. So it kind of depends. And for the management Odoo of today, I use the art market where I was selling 15,000 art objects per month. So I was bigger than eBay that be I developed website for them and I use this market to leverage on my client to sell the management software. And that allowed me to kickstart developing an ERP. What they needed, I could have done it in two months. Just managing auctioneers is very easy, but I did it in one year because I started to do an accounting and inventory management software, all the things I needed for the future.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, you take you took the opportunity.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yes. And I use them to leverage. And as soon as it started to work, I switched to other segments of the market.

Olivier Colson:

Very interesting. And as a student, how did you manage to handle both lives? Because you had your studies, you had the product?

Fabien Pinckaers:

I don't think I managed very well because I ended up with cirrhosis, so... My liver is dead. Basically, I drank too much beer. But I was passionated. When you are passionate that you don't count yours, you just develop a lot.

Olivier Colson:

You just made it work. Okay. And so it never occurred to you that you might give up one or the others. Weren't you down sometimes to see the amount of work you had to do for both your students' life and professional life, and also maybe personal things you would like to achieve outside of that were in their moment where you were like, Whoa, it's too much. I should stop one or the other.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Actually, I nearly stopped the study because I was doing so many things either on the student and parties side of student life or the business side. If I have my degree now, it's because of Antony or CTO.

Olivier Colson:

Okay, tell us the story.

Fabien Pinckaers:

I was in my last year, and I doubled. So I didn't give my final thesis, I didn't give my thesis because I was doing so much of other things, and that didn't interest me at all. And I still had four exams to do, and I decided not to present my exam in June, so I had to do it in the second session in August. I didn't watch the calendar of when and where the exams were, so I decided not to go.

Olivier Colson:

Okay.

Fabien Pinckaers:

And at some point, Antony told me in the middle of the session, "he told me, no, you have to go. You have to check if your exams are this week." And fortunately, all my exams were in the second week and not on the first.

Olivier Colson:

So you could catch up.

Fabien Pinckaers:

So I could catch up. I passed my exam, the four exams, and I get my diploma. And after that, I had nightmares for maybe six, ten years of me not getting the degree. So I was like, Oh yeah, I tried to do this. It was a good thing to get, even though, at the time, I was not even thinking about it, it could have destroyed at least my ego.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, I guess it's important. Well, thank you, Antony, then. Okay, let's go back to the way Odoo started to grow. So there was the first fundraising, if I'm right, in 2011.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, 2010. It's actually very late. Most companies raise money much before we were already 100 employees at the time. But yes, the first one was three million of euros in 2010.

Olivier Colson:

Okay. And how did it go? How was the contact with the investors? How did you get in touch?

Fabien Pinckaers:

To understand why we did that? We have to understand where we were at the time. I have always been passionate about open source. Everything I did was open source. Everything we developed was open source. And so, at the time, our management software were fully open source, and we were selling services. So we were kind of asking the client, what do you want? And we develop everything you want. And when you do that for seven, seven years, you get software that has tons of features, everything people ask for, but that is ugly and complex, like a hydra with ten heads. You can imagine the kind of things. So we were like, okay, sending services to develop the software is not the right thing to do because we only develop what the customer needs or what the customer asks for, but in order to develop a product that is simple and clean, we shouldn't listen to the customer, we should invest in research development. But you cannot do that with the margin of a service company, the margins are too, too tight. So we had to do a pivot in the business model. And so with okay, so we decided to stop all our services activities from one month to another, but that was all source of revenue. So it was not possible. In order to do that, we had to raise money so that we could have time to redefine the business model and switch to another business model that would be based on subscription, selling maintenance contracts. Maintenance is like a support bug fix and upgrades. So we had to do this fundraising to do the pivot in our business model, and we did that. We stopped all service activities, started to open a network of partners so the partners would do the service, and we started to sell support contracts. We needed three millions of euros in order for the time to do the switch because we stopped the revenue from day one to day two until we get enough support contract to support our costs.

Olivier Colson:

Okay. And you had a second fundraising a few years later. Yeah?

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah. And then it turns out that when you sell support contracts, people are very happy the first year because it's the riskier with implementation, and the second year all your customer tells you your product is great. I love it, I'm using it, but I don't need support because it works. And so the business model was very, very bad. We tried to survive with that, but we came to a point where we had no cash, we couldn't pay developers. We had a lot of difficulties for a few months and years so we really tried. And at some point, we said, okay, "no, the business model just doesn't work," customers don't want to buy support and the partner was sending the support themselves. So even for the customer who wanted, they could buy the support of the partner. So it was extremely difficult to sustain investment in research and development. That's what I wanted to do build a product with the revenues of a support company. So we had to do another switch in the business model, which was to go on the cloud. That's what we call it online today, and to refocus on what we would say, "an open core business model" where we would sell a few features. And today it's 20% of our features that are in enterprise, and 80% is open source in Odoo community. And to do this switch, it would also cost a lot of money because we needed to clean the software so that it gets more accessible, more simple. To use in the SAS, we had to launch the SAS cloud platform and so on, so it cost a lot of money and at the time we had we didn't have money anymore, so we raised seven million of euros.

Olivier Colson:

Okay, okay.

Fabien Pinckaers:

To do this second pivot.

Olivier Colson:

And that's where the magic started to really work.

Fabien Pinckaers:

That's yeah. And I think it's the time you join. So maybe you are part of the magic.

Olivier Colson:

Just after the fundraising. It was in 2014 and I joined in 2016.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah. So you are part of the magic.

Olivier Colson:

Thanks you. But indeed, I remember that we talked about that when I entered Odoo and that it was really starting to... You could feel that it was starting to work actually.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, we are. The thing is, for us, it was a massive transition because, over the past ten years we were close to bankruptcy. When we get the three million of euro, we had like one year where we were comfortable, but the rest six years was close to bankruptcy, we couldn't pay salaries. The business model was not working. We needed tens or hundreds of developers to develop such a product because the product is large and complex. But we didn't have the revenues to follow our ambitions. And when we did the switch to the business model and went to an open core, it was very hard for me because I always praise the community that we will always be 100% open source. That's what I wanted to do. I always refused to develop proprietary features, but when we did it, and it completely saved us and it allowed us to grow ten times easily. And the small part that was proprietary was only 20% of what we did was enough to finance the 80% that we are open source. So on one side, that's something I never wanted to do. On the other one, it allowed me to contribute ten times to the open-source community because we have ten times more developers now. So it's kind of a massive improvement. It was a big mistake for me. I think one of the biggest mistakes I've done. Actually, the biggest mistake was how I managed the expectations of the community more than switching because switching was necessary. It was really a very good thing.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, that's what I was I was going to ask actually, how did they react when you told them? Well, actually it will not be very...

Fabien Pinckaers:

Very bad. And I understand. I mean, they were right. So for ten years, we tell you, we are open source. We will always be open source. We will never do proprietary, proprietary is bad, bad, bad. And then they join us because of that, we were aligned on these values and so on. And at some point, me, the founder tells them, Guys, sorry, I was wrong and I was really wrong. Nothing was planned. I had no other options if I wanted the software to survive and be someone in this very competitive market and I tell them, no, it doesn't work. If we want to grow and be someone a real ERP like Microsoft Dynamics, we have to do it in another way. And so I deceived everyone. Everyone was deceived. And so everyone started to complain and bash or do or all community. So it was very hard emotionally for us. But they were right. I mean, I think looking back, if I have told the community, okay, today we are open source, we are not sure we will stay open-source, so we'll try your best. But it's possible that we get proprietary in order to finance the open source developments. If we have been clear from the early beginning about that, I think the community would have understood.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, they would have been prepared to that.

Fabien Pinckaers:

But then we sold them dream that actually was impossible. And so we deceived them and then they were very hard on that. And I understand the issue is that I couldn't have known. I mean, I wanted to do 100% open-source. We always wanted to do that. It just was not possible. And also bad thinking because, actually, we can contribute ten times more now because we have a way to sustain and finance the development.

Olivier Colson:

Okay. So you've said a lot that you believed in open source. Could you tell us a bit more about that? So where does it come from, if you remember, why do you believe that much in open source?

Fabien Pinckaers:

I believe it's a very good development model. It's fun. I mean, to work with communities and not being in your closed group of people is great. I also believe it's not a good business model. So that's why we had to have an open-core business model. So we do it because we think it's a good business development model and because we like working with communities, and we think it's good for everyone to have a free version of Odoo for the ones who cannot pay for the enterprise version, to help in some countries. I think it's great for everyone. I mean, knowledge should be shareable, and knowledge should be accessible to anyone. And software is knowledge. So this is something important for me. I don't know where it comes from, but I have always done this. I never used windows, not a single day in my life.

Olivier Colson:

Not a single day?

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah. It's... You know, when you are a developer, you always have a friend that tells you, Hey, my computer is broken and they call me and put me in front of it. I don't even know how to put the Wi-Fi on it because I started directly from Microsoft Dos to Linux s o I never did something else. Yeah.

Olivier Colson:

Okay. So that's really part of your DNA.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, and I did it because I like that at the beginning. And now it turns out that it's a very, very good business model. It took me 15 years to understand that.

Olivier Colson:

Okay, so about the way we make Odoo evolve, how do you know when it's important to start something new or to change something? Where do you get inspiration for really new things and things that are going to, you know, the killer feature for the next version? Where do you get the idea for that?

Fabien Pinckaers:

But that's the great thing about being open-source or open-minded or transparent. It's both of all of the things that we work with communities, so we get feedback from all around the world. We have a lot of knowledge around us, so we forge our own opinions. Me or the product owners or you as a developer, everyone forges its own opinions, but we evolve much faster than traditional companies because we work with all these great guys all around the world that allows us feedback and things to do. And so it's only about participating, being open. And if you are open with communities and your customers and your vendors, then you start to get insights on things that are not working, things they need. And based on that, you start to think about what could be the solution. And it's not me. We are a group of product owners, and the way we organize that to do the developers bring a lot of value to. So it's really a matter of discussions between product owners and developers.

Olivier Colson:

Elaborate a bit more about that because that's interesting. I heard you said on another podcast that Odoo is a special company and that everybody says that about their company, but for us it was true. Could you explain really why? Because you said it a little here, but I want to hear the details.

Fabien Pinckaers:

I think we can ask you the question, Is it true? How do you feel about it? Because you are here since a few years.

Olivier Colson:

Well, it's true. Yeah.

Fabien Pinckaers:

I really believe that every company tells you that we are autonomous and responsible and that people evolve. But at Odoo, it's true and in most companies it's not. And, yeah, and I think it's because we are not about hierarchies, or management layers there is not that much politics to do. We are all focused on doing something good. Developers develop, consultants try to implement, product owners try to think about the ideas, but everyone is well focused on their job, and so we can evolve by doing, by doing things. What helps us too is that everything we do has massive leverage, we work on millions of users because we are open source. We have customers in 140 countries. So it's very rewarding also for us, that small thing we do is used by millions of people. Not a lot of companies can say that. And we have a culture where we trust people and because we trust them, we can give them high responsibilities very early on in their career. Like a consultant when it started to do it directly get the project is alone and responsible on this project, to transform the company because what we do is transforming companies. So it's not a small thing. It's sometimes a matter of life and death for these companies. Yeah, So I think it's that we are good at being open, collaborating together and working together, autonomy, responsibilities, and a lot of evolution for people because we are surrounded by a lot of good information.

Olivier Colson:

And so I think there is a big management decision in all that. So you might say, okay, it came naturally, but it is management's decision to maintain this kind of sphere around people where the dialogue is very, very important and where everybody is encouraged to challenge pretty much everything all the time if they don't agree. Is it something that you decided early on or it just came, and you were like, okay, actually it's really cool like this, so let's keep it?

Fabien Pinckaers:

I think we have been like that since the beginning, but at the beginning, it was not formal. We couldn't put a word on it. It's just the way we were.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, it was few people. And you were discussing them.

Fabien Pinckaers:

When you start, the culture is you. And when you start to recruit your first five employees, the culture is still you because it's you that talks to them, and that's forged the culture. And then you start growing up, and as you become a mid-sized company, the culture is not you anymore. It's the managers that manage teams and so on. And so we wanted to keep that spirit. That was very good. So we... Actually you're right, we invested a lot in keeping the culture as the culture became not me, but managers or team leaders and everything. So we did a lot of things like a culture book, The Survival Guide for Odooers. We do some training for managers. And we are strict about the culture if we want. If we see someone who is doing politics or wants to grow and become a manager because of hierarchies, he wants to manage people and that kind of thing. We kill them as soon as we see them. So we are extremely strict to ensure that as we grow, we keep the same spirit.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, very interesting. And it's true that from an internal point of view, I totally agree. And it's funny to see how we managed to keep that despite the fact we grew a lot. My team doubled in size the last year, and actually you wouldn't believe it, but it's possible to maintain this.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah. You still feel like a small team. I remember when you joined, I think it was one year after you joined you tell me what I like about to do is that I can be who I am. I can dress the way I like to dress. And you wear like in black with spikes.

Fabien & Olivier:

Not spikes, but I definitely say very "black."

Fabien Pinckaers:

And you told me I really Odoo because I am who I am. I can be myself. I don't have to play the role of a good employee. I remember you told me that.

Olivier Colson:

It's true it's something. So I'm talking about my life a little bit now, but it's really something that was worrying me when I graduated from university. I didn't want to be hired by some company for which I had to become someone else. I was me, and I was fine with that. And I had skills, and I wanted a company where I could be myself without having to change and just, you know, get into the little box that they designed for you. This was definitely something I didn't want. So thank you for that.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Odoo is a bit like that. It could be seen as a group of friends with a common objective. We have an objective. It's clear we know what we want to do, but we work like a group of people like you would have at the university.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, exactly. That's. That's what I was saying also at the beginning. You know, when family asks you, Oh, how is it going in your new job? And I was just saying this very simply like that. It feels like a very good student project where you're friends with everyone, and everything is working, you know, not so not, not the bad ones. Okay, I don't know if you have one, but maybe... Do you have an anecdote where this way of challenging everything really changed what you would have done? So a big decision that was made because of someone that didn't agree at all and who spent time to really discuss it and be like, No, no, we shouldn't do that.

Fabien Pinckaers:

I'm sure you have plenty with me.

Olivier Colson:

Oh, I have plenty for everything. But, um.

Fabien Pinckaers:

I think every day we have disagreements. Sometimes we even shout at each other. Not me, because it's not my character. But there are some people that do that, that you could hear them from three offices away.

Olivier Colson:

Definitely!

Fabien Pinckaers:

From three rooms away, because they shout. And I always think to myself, if people are shouting and things like that, it's actually because they care and we allow them to be... Okay, it's their character, which it's better not to shout on others but... Some can deal with that. But most of the time when it happens, when we disagree, when we talk about 2 hours on a topic or even when it becomes with a lot of tension, it's because we care. And we start to think about that. Is that actually very positive? It's because we care. It's because people can express themselves. They are not afraid of shouting on their managers or... And when you get to that kind of environment, it changes the relationship, and it's only about what's good to be done for the project. It's about trying to be rational and not about who's right or well, decisions for my career, for the project. And we try to do that. I think, for a large part, we succeeded.

Olivier Colson:

So we like to do things in a very disruptive way. So recently, for version 16, you change the pricing. Could you tell us a bit more about that? So not really into the details because we're going to talk about that in another episode, but your opinion on that? How did we decide that, and why is that a good idea?

Fabien Pinckaers:

So it started with a problem, and the problem we had was... Odoo was used by very small companies, one user and also very large companies, with thousands of users. And the average price contracts we had with single users, companies, self-employed people was around €100, per user, because he was alone. On the other side, the old pricing was €18 per user for large companies. And in the end, it's not fair. I mean, small companies pay way more than a large company per user. It doesn't seem fair.€100 for a self-employed person was too much. You just need a few apps, maybe a website, and invoicing and quotation €100 per month, it's way too much for us. On the other hand, €18 for large companies per user and per month was nothing. We had customers like when we told them. Yeah, but that's one extra user. I've seen a CFO getting a €20 bill from this pocket and saying, here it is. Here is my €20. And so we wanted to rebalance that. We wanted to have small and mid-sized companies pay less, much less, and large companies to pay a bit more. That would be more fair. And in the other hand, that was one of the problems we wanted to fix and we fixed actually. And the other one we had is that undo is very large. You have applications for everything website builder, accounting inventory, but also productivity applications that are quite great, like managing human resources or e-sign where you can sign documents, and digitalize all your documents in the company with document management and things like that. And most of the companies I met, the customer I met, they were using like ten to 20% of Odoo, the core applications like accounting says purchase inventory but they were not using e-sign document management, knowledge management, all that kind of things. So we were underused and so we wanted a price that allows people to use way more without having the barrier of I need to ask the purchase department if they agree to buy the 16€, you have to pay for the sign. And so that's what we did. We did a single price where all the applications are included to be sure that our customer use modal software. And actually, we reversed the logic before the logic was we sell apps and the more a company wants to use apps they will pay, they will have to pay more. Now, the logic is completely the opposite. We give them for free. And because we give them apps for free, like if you give a human resources apps, then the human resource department starts to use the system, and you get more users, and you get more because you give the app for free. So that's the logic with it.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, they have an additional incentive to try the features, and when they say it's working, they pay for it.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, we believe the upsell will come by the fact that we will offer things. And the results are amazing. We were at 1200 new clients per month two months ago, and now we are 3400 new c lients per month.

Olivier Colson:

Wow, well...

Fabien Pinckaers:

I think it's a lot of small clients, so the revenue are not that much. That's a big of an issue.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, but hopefully, they will grow. Yeah. Okay. So it's a decision for the future of Odoo, of course. And what challenges do you see for our future now. What will be difficult for us, and what will we have to tackle?

Fabien Pinckaers:

I think they are the same than a few years ago. We have to continue growing while staying with who we are. We have to keep the same culture, mindset, relationship between people while we grow ten time. So that's the challenge being 25,000 people, but still feel like we are an SME, working together in small groups and being efficient, focusing on a common goal rather than focusing on other things that are less valuable. That's one thing. And the other thing is always the same. What we do is we help people to do more in less time in companies. We make companies more efficient, and we provide tools, productivity tools for any position for every department in a company. And that's what we have to continue to grow. The success of Odoo is that. It's the product. We offer a lot of features at an affordable price, and we have to keep growing on these to our axes. More featured, more productive, more efficient, faster, and at a lower price. So we'll continue pushing on these two directions in the future.

Olivier Colson:

Okay. Okay. So I bought our marketing strategy. You told it a little earlier that education was the key. And it's true that the way we do things, we don't often we don't, I think, pay other people to talk about us. We don't do sponsoring, and we really try to do that.

Fabien Pinckaers:

No, we do a bit, we started six months ago. We started to influence our marketing, and it's quite, quite cool, actually. But yeah, you are right that we did it quite late. Most companies would have done it earlier.

Olivier Colson:

But even there, we try to have something, if I remember well from the discussions I had with marketing people, we try to have influencers that have a link with what we are doing. It's not just, Oh yeah, we put it there and people will buy.

Fabien Pinckaers:

The whole marketing of Odoo is based on the fact that our challenges is our community. So today there is 100,000 people living on the do we are developing, selling or doing consulting on Odoo. It's 100,000 jobs. We know that in a few years this is going to be 500,000 people whose job is to sell, develop or do things on Odoo. So we know that we'll have to train 400,000 people all around the world to deliver service. And we want them to be good when they develop or deliver service. So it's a key challenge to train people. You're right. So everything we do in marketing is around that. It's not about pushing our logo or brand visibility. We don't care about that. It's more about educating people. So most of our marketing activities are about creating content like e-learning or blogs for the community. With influencers, we try to explain some of the apps we do. It's not about pushing our logo. It's always about what are the value? Why do we do it that way? Doing some webinars and so the marketing activities around that is about educating. Yeah, and everything we did like the LabOdoo or the scale up that we do for universities so that they can organize courses on Odoo. It's always about educating people and not about pushing a logo.

Olivier Colson:

So yeah, we really want to get people into the thing instead of just attracting them with fancy, nice looking things.

Fabien Pinckaers:

The way I see it is that R&D (research and development), they create value. It's our product. The marketing, they explain these values. That's the way I think. Marketing also creates value by teaching, explaining, and educating. But the role of a good marketing department is to create value. As the R&D is creating value in the product, the marketing is creating value for our community.

Olivier Colson:

And I think it's a very, very interesting way of doing it again because you feel this transparency about the product. So we sell it as it is by explaining it because we know it's good and it's something that we feel a bit everywhere in the company.

Fabien Pinckaers:

When you open source, you cannot hide. People have access to the source code. They can try it, and so if it's bad, they will notice.

Olivier Colson:

And even for the enterprise modules, I mean, RUNABOUT is accessible for everyone. Anyone can try.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Even the GitHub account for everyone who pays. So millions of people, they have access to the GitHub account.

Olivier Colson:

So we can't hide anywhere.

Fabien & Olivier:

And it's better like this.

Olivier Colson:

Okay, about our growth a little. So we raised money, we said it, but not that much, if we compare it to other companies of our size. How would you explain that we managed to do it with that little money? So it's a few millions, though, but.

Fabien Pinckaers:

I think it's because we suffered. And also, what we do is something you built over a few decades. It's not something you can build in two, three, five years. I mean, management software complex companies are complex, and making companies fully integrated while keeping things simple is extremely complex. And so that's the kind of things that you need to build over ten, 20, 30 years. And so we didn't have any other options. You can raise funds and recruit a lot and without having revenues if you plan to do that for three or five years. If you want to play the long game and still be there in 20, 30 years with a great product that transformed the world, you have to you have to play the safe way. You have to be sustainable financially. You have to be sure you can pay all your salaries because, especially in these moments where every valuation are crashing, nobody can raise money anymore. We are very happy to be self-sustained and continue our growth and continue helping our customers. So it matter of because we play the long game, we had to do it also financially, which is, even though we have had a lot of years close to bankruptcy, we were never far away from being profitable or at least at equilibrium.

Olivier Colson:

And how did this suffering influence how do the mindset, and the way of working?

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, I think you get a point here. If Odoo is... We are extremely efficient. I mean, there are not a lot of companies that are as efficient as we are. We have only a few people to do a lot of things, in pretty much every department. And the reason why we are so efficient today is because we had to fight for ten years without money, trying to do things with nothing. And that forced us who we are today. When you raise money, when you get ten millions of euros, you can recruit, you can spend money in exhibitions and marketing. We couldn't do that. We had to do with the minimum we had. We had to pay all the salaries. It was hard at the end of the month, and so it forced us to be extremely efficient, to be cost-savvy, to invest only where it's needed and not invest where it's not needed to cut every inefficiencies. And that's something that we have done for ten years. We really had a lot of years close to bankruptcy. And so, if we are efficient today, it's because of these hard times. It's really thanks to that. We didn't notice we were suffering and close to bankruptcy, where it's hard, i t's hard. But now, if I look back, I'm very happy that we went through these difficult phases because it's one of the reasons why we are extremely competitive today, and it's one of the reasons why the others competitor won't be able to compete on the price on the features with us because they don't have that. Most of the companies of all size, they are bloated and large and complex, and slow to decide, and they spend money here and there, so they will never be able to afford software at 19.90 Euro per user per month that covers all your business needs, that's simple and evolves super fast every year. For that, you need an efficiency that is uncommon.

Olivier Colson:

Okay, so I suggest we just end the interview with a few, I would say lighter questions. So I have some about you, but I have two others that I hadn't asked, and I'm curious to have the answer, actually. Odoo changed name a few times. So also at the beginning it was a tiny ERP, open ERP, and then finally, Odoo, what does Odoo mean? How did we choose that name?

Fabien Pinckaers:

Do you want the real answer or the fake one we did for the public?

Fabien & Olivier:

I would like both of you.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Let's start with the fake one. When we released the change of the name, it was Open ERP before and we had to switch to Odoo. The message we said to the press was we analyzed every company in the IT sector based on their valuation. And if you do a graph of all the companies on the number of "o" they have in the name and their valuation, you had like a graph that is growing like crazy, like zero, it was quite low one o, it was midsize. And the companies that had two O's in their name was exploding.

Olivier Colson:

So maybe that was the key.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Because you had you had the Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, they all had two O's in their name. And so we said to the press, Look at this graph. I mean, zero, one, two O is growing. So we decided to put three O's in the name. That was the fake thing, but it was funny. And the press used this information, so it worked. Yeah. The real answer is I did two mistakes. The first one was to call it tiny ERP, and then large clients were telling me, Why did you call it ERP? I don't want to invest millions of Euros in something that's tiny. And especially if you want to go to the US. For Americans, you have to be big. You don't have to be tiny. So we had to change the name, and then we named it open ERP and then some IT companies were not pro-open-source. I mean, when you buy your own accounting software, the license doesn't matter that much. So open source was not perceived very positively in these areas. So open was not great. It was okay, but it was not great and ERP was bad. I mean, everyone imaging SAP, which is very bad and everyone has bad experience with that kind of software. So we wanted to not be compared with them anymore. So Open ERP was a bad name. So we had to change again. And because we did the mistake two times of choosing a bad name, that meant something. We said, okay, the third time we pick a name that doesn't mean anything so that at least we don't do a mistake. And so that's what we did.

Olivier Colson:

Ah, funny story.

Fabien Pinckaers:

So the short answer is that it doesn't mean anything.

Olivier Colson:

Okay. So all the questions about you this time, so you read a lot. What kind of books? Do you have any suggestions for the audience?

Fabien Pinckaers:

Depending. In what areas?

Olivier Colson:

Oh, I don't know, you choose.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Um, I just offered to my daughter today, "Never split the difference." Great book about Chris was about negotiation. In other area, like more for everyone The Hidden Life of Trees, a really good book. Usually, I don't read that kind of books, but this one I really liked it.

Olivier Colson:

Okay.

Fabien Pinckaers:

The Art of Strategy, I think we offered you this book, every year we offer books to employees. Two years ago we had two books per department. I don't remember R&D, but I think R&D received the book, The Art of Strategy.

Olivier Colson:

No, for me, it was The Hidden Life of Tree.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Oh, yeah. Okay.

Olivier Colson:

I still haven't read it, but it's in my shelf.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Oh, you have to. It's quite good.

Olivier Colson:

Yeah, it's waiting for me. Yeah.

Fabien Pinckaers:

It's part of our culture. We want people to evolve and I think reading books is a good way to evolve. So we still have today no process when we recruit an employee... So we had an issue. I always have wanted people to read more because I believe in the fact that you evolve as you read good books. There are plenty of bad books, but if you read a good one, you can evolve a lot. And so we offered books at the beginning to employees telling them, "Hey, read these books, it's great." And nobody was reading them, like you did. You didn't read it.

Olivier Colson:

I told it was waiting in my shelf. I have a shelf just for that, just for the books.

Fabien Pinckaers:

I noticed this issue, and the way I solved this issue was to say, okay, we will offer the books to the employees before they joined the company. So when you sign your contract, before you join, you receive two books by post that we send to every new employee and know they are reading it. It's like you have a pressure, "Hey guys, you are coming to us." They have a pressure. Before joining the company, I know they read the book and, often, I hear people saying "I read the book, it's great." So it works to offer them before they join.

Olivier Colson:

Cool. So maybe that's part of the answer to that other question. How do you disconnect from work? So is reading one of the ways you do it, or is there anything else for you to disconnect?

Fabien Pinckaers:

I don't want to disconnect. I mean, to do what we do, we have to be obsessed, and most people will see that negatively. But it's actually quite cool. I mean, when you love something, you can do it like. It's like a tennis sportsman that's high level. He will do tennis all the time. And because he likes not.

Olivier Colson:

I think it depends on ton your personal relationship.

Fabien Pinckaers:

But for me, at least, I'm obsessed about Odoo, and in a good way. So I don't really need to disconnect. Actually, sometimes I get bored when I disconnect. I mean, changing the world is cool, transforming company is great.

Olivier Colson:

So why would you do something else?

Fabien Pinckaers:

Going on a beach is boring compared to what we do and the impact we have at Odoo.

Olivier Colson:

That's a developer answer, haha. But I agree. Okay. Any source of inspiration? I mean, in your personal life, public figure you like to listen to or.

Fabien Pinckaers:

No. There are people I liked, books I read I liked. But I think we get the inspiration from the people we work with, whether it's our developers, our product owners, our consultants or sales, or working with the community. I think all what made us today, and me specifically, is the relationship I had with everyone. And because of the fact that we are quite open and transparent, we can have good discussions with everyone, pretty much everyone, and that forged us and me. So yeah, it's a some of the more things, it's not like there is one guy I really like.

Olivier Colson:

It's a very good answer. Everyone will be very pleased about that at Odoo, you know. I'm sure. So okay, so I have a tricky question, then. If you had to work for another company than Odoo. Let's imagine that Odoo doesn't exist at all, and you have to pick a company.

Fabien Pinckaers:

First, I would pick a developer job. That's something I miss. I mean, development is cool, management is boring. Uh, so I would try to develop something which is probably an open-source company and a product that I like, which means has an impact. It Doesn't have to be management, could be B2C or whatever. But if I am a developer in the product I like, I think I will be happy.

Olivier Colson:

Okay. Okay. That's a good answer. All right. So we are reaching the end of this episode. So I don't know if you have something you want to add for the listeners.

Fabien Pinckaers:

Yeah, keep subscribing because the episode two would be great, I guess.

Olivier Colson:

Hey, that's. That's my line. That's all right. So Fabien said it. Don't forget to comment, to like, to subscribe, click the little bell if there is one on the platform.

Fabien & Olivier:

It's not YouTube. I don't know. I don't know. Is there a bell on the thing you're using to learn the job? Okay, whatever.

Olivier Colson:

Subscribe where you can, and see you again soon in the next episode of Planet Odoo.