Translation of an interview with Fabien Pinckaers, founder and owner (55% of the capital) of Odoo, located in Belgium, published in the Belgian newspaper La Libre on May 15, 2026.
Valued at $11.6 billion, Odoo has nearly 8,000 employees, an international network of 21,000 partners, 20 offices abroad, and a global community of 28 million users. You regularly repeat that between the creation of Odoo in 2002 and today, you experienced years of struggle. What was the element that, at a certain point, allowed Odoo to experience hyper-growth, uninterrupted for 10 years? We have been in hyper-growth since 2002. Odoo grows by about 50% each year. I don't like it when Odoo's success is reduced to just a few years of strong growth. Our success is 20 years of hard work, with a few important business model pivots. First, in 2010, when we switched from a service company to a software publisher. In 2014, when we switched to SaaS mode in the cloud. Finally, there was the switch to a hybrid model, combining free and paid modules. How do you maintain such a growth rate for over 20 years? And is it sustainable for much longer? It's just daily work and execution. There wasn't one decision that, at a certain point, had a trigger effect. Is it sustainable? Yes, I think so. It's a question of market size. Odoo today doesn't even have 1% market share. So there's room for growth. Where companies generally lose their way is that the bigger they get, the more they lose their focus. They launch more products, create new departments, become more complex... and they end up losing their way. Odoo has managed to stay focused on what it does best: developing software for SMEs. We invest an enormous amount of time and money in the product. Is this the vision you already had in 2002? It has evolved, but there are constants. One of them is that the best product always wins in the end. I've always thought that. Today, I think we make the best product. But it's possible to grow even faster if the product continues to improve. You recently explained that your challenge for the coming years will be to survive to be among the last 2 or 3 business management software publishers in the world. You added that Odoo would be one of them. What makes you so optimistic? Market consolidation has begun. As has already happened for other types of software, we will end up with 2 or 3 pieces of software so good that no one will use the others anymore. And Odoo will be one of them… Today, if you have to choose one, it's ours. I don't think the other software publishers are capable of delivering an offer that is as simple, affordable, and powerful, suitable for small, medium, and large companies, as Odoo's. If we stick to the product, we are the only ones who can do it. But we still have to prove ourselves. I remind you, we still only have 1% market share. What could prevent Odoo from being one of those 2 or 3 global players? Purely internal reasons. We don't have a market problem, nor a competition problem. Our competitors, fortunately, are useless and slow. The only problem is ourselves. We are currently over 7,500. We will be 10,000 within a year. We will then move to 20,000, 30,000... The challenge will be to maintain our company culture, stay focused on the product, while continuing to innovate and grow by 50% per year. Could recruiting developers be an obstacle? As entrepreneurs, we solve problems. That is, moreover, one of Odoo's strengths. There are many companies that don't solve the problems they face. At Odoo, when we have a problem, we implement solutions to fix it. How do you manage to recruit the 200 developers you currently need in Belgium when you say that only 80 graduate from UCLouvain each year? We look for them abroad. More than half of our developers are recruited outside of Belgium. We are also very strict about recruiting developers. We only recruit 1.5% of the applications we receive. For sales and business analysts, the problem doesn't arise. What makes a good candidate? Someone intelligent, who is capable of learning. We don't look at candidates' CVs. We submit them to various tests related to the positions to be filled. I have done statistics, based on the thousands of recruitments we have already carried out, to determine the factors for hiring success at Odoo. For the CV and experience, there is practically no correlation. The first success factor is "job-specific" tests. For a developer, we test their ability to develop. For a salesperson, we test them on giving a sales pitch. The second factor is simply an IQ test. Most recruiters fail; they attach far too much importance to "soft skills" (behavioral competencies). Is the person friendly? Do they speak multiple languages? Do they have leadership? In my observations, the correlation between "soft skills" and the probability of being hired is very low. There is a lot of talk in the software world about "SaaSpocalypse." The idea is that with generative AI and AI agents, the classic SaaS model and per-user pricing would be over... Bad news for Odoo? Those who hold this kind of speech are mostly token sellers. It is true that traditional SaaS software, in the proprietary sense, is suffering. I have always been passionate about open source, that is, free access to software source code. If I created Odoo, it was to contribute to open source. 20 years ago, it was super cool. 10 years ago, SaaS became cool. Today, it's AI. But what I love about AI is that open source is becoming cool again. Why? Because for AIs to work well, we need the source codes to be able to adapt them. Open source therefore becomes an asset thanks to AI. Odoo is ideally positioned. So generative AI and AI agents are not going to replace open source software? No. On the other hand, AI will allow adaptation and customization of accounting, payment, inventory management, etc., applications. We will be able to add functionalities. For users, it's the best of both worlds: that of AI and that of open source software. Odoo already integrates an AI that allows our customers to customize their applications. They can do this either via a chat or via our Odoo.sh platform. So is AI excellent news for Odoo? For Odoo and for humanity. Are you sure ? The AI revolution is not comparable to previous technological revolutions. It is of lesser magnitude. We have forgotten, but before the arrival of the steam engine, everything had to be done by hand! The impact on agriculture and industry was gigantic. Besides that, AI is not going to change everyone's job. There will be gains here and there. The impact of IT and the Internet was much greater. AI, in comparison, is a nice revolution but its impact is more limited. Yet it frightens a lot of people… At every technological revolution, people first started to panic. But, each time, employment increased. There is obviously a transition phase, with job losses and creations. But the overall impact will be positive. Odoo has always positioned itself in the SME segment. However, we see that you are attracting more and more large accounts, as well as public administrations. Does this lead Odoo to broaden its customer target? We are indeed seeing an explosion of large accounts. In Belgium, but also abroad. In the beginning, Odoo was seen as a newcomer and large accounts were wary. Now that we have proven ourselves and they see the added value of our products, they are flocking to us. If we take the "mid-market" segment, Microsoft Dynamics has 44,000 customers worldwide. NetSuite, Oracle's equivalent, is second with 42,000 customers. At Odoo, we have 240,000 paying customers, and we must add several million free users. In terms of users, Odoo is overwhelmingly ahead. In terms of revenue, however, this is not the case. The reason is that we sell our application suite for 19 euros per month, per user. What about SAP? It's less comparable because SAP targets larger accounts. They must have around 25,000 customers. Why do you claim that Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP are useless and slow? Fifteen years ago, they were the undisputed market leaders. They let Odoo develop, without moving. Today, their products are outdated and expensive. Is Odoo's challenge to convert its free users into paying users? No. Odoo is profitable. There is no stress from that point of view, even if we lost a little money last year. But that was an exception. We already have 18 million in positive cash flow since the beginning of the year. So we don't need more money. What we want is more users. With an unchanged price of 19.90 euros per month? The price has been unchanged for four years while we have experienced an inflation of 20%. So it is possible that we will adapt it. But I don't know yet what we're going to do. Odoo has never been very profitable, which is not a problem. Our goal is to have the lowest possible price and a maximum number of users. Invest in startups? I have more impact by investing in Odoo than in startups. Odoo's valuation is approaching 10 billion euros. If we continue to work well, there is a strong chance that we will reach 20, 30, 40 billion in the years to come. If, tomorrow, I decided to invest in startups, dedicating half of my time to it, the probability that I would create another company valued at 1 billion euros is not even 10%. Bringing Odoo to a valuation of 20 or 40 billion will have much more impact on Belgium in terms of employment, revenue, and added value for Wallonia. Odoo has been multiplying partnerships lately. The latest is the one concluded with Partena Professional. There was also the one with KPMG. Is this a way to accelerate the acquisition of new customers? One partnership is not the same as another. What we did with KPMG and Partena is very different. Partena allows us to open a market—that of the payslip—which is closed. Even if we offer a payroll engine in Odoo, it's a