Navigating Business Transition: From Services to Software

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. 

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?