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

Fabien Pinckaers built Odoo to $550M ARR from Belgium with no outbound sales, no VPs, no budgets, and no intention to ever sell or IPO.

• Odoo hit $550M ARR in 2024, growing ~50% per year for 20 consecutive years, entirely on inbound leads until a few months ago.
• Pinckaers bought the domain sorry.com at age 26, planning to use it once Odoo surpassed SAP — he eventually did redirect it with a single-word page.
• The 2022 pricing cut from €120 to €20/user/month attracted 2.8x more clients despite everyone else raising prices during inflation.
• Odoo has never hired external managers or VPs — all team leads are internal promotions, and teams of ~10 have no recurring meetings, no budgets, and no KPIs.
• IQ test is the second-strongest predictor of employee performance after a live skills test; résumés are largely ignored in a one-interview, five-day hiring process.
• Pinckaers owns 57% of Odoo after only two early fundraising rounds (both at low valuations he deliberately accepted to buy more shares himself).
• There will never be an IPO or trade sale; liquidity for investors comes via secondary transactions every ~3–4 years — the last was €500M at a €5B valuation.
• India grew from 16 new clients/month to 800/month after Pinckaers relocated there for a year with his family to coach the local team.

2025-02-12 · Watch on YouTube