Fabien Pinckaers, the founder of Odoo, spoke to our microphone in a question-and-answer game. The entrepreneur talks about his life and his journey as a successful entrepreneur, whose company reached a valuation of 5 billion euros.
What is your most precious object?
“My most precious object is a computer. We make millions with it.”
What is Odoo and who is your product for?
“Odoo is a suite of applications for SMEs. Cashier management, your website, accounting, stock management, whatever you need. You have an application available in just a few clicks. And all these applications are affordable, that is to say 20 euros per user per month.“
How many users do you currently have?
“In terms of number of customers, Odoo has 15 million users.”
How was your school career?
“My school career was completely normal… except that I still worked a lot on the side. But at school, I was like everyone else.“
Has your family influenced your career?
“I come from a family of entrepreneurs, my dad is an auctioneer. His specialty is toys and porcelain. I’ve worked a lot my whole life, so it’s an inspiration to me as a work.“
What is your main personal difficulty?
“So what I can’t do is hold back. I have a goldfish memory.”
Do you have qualities that compensate for this difficulty?
“Fortunately, I have great logic, but it causes problems sometimes.“
Do you know how many hours you sleep per night?
“How many hours do I sleep per night? I don’t know.“
Where do you currently live?
“I don’t have a second residence and I don’t have a first either, since I live in my wife’s house, which she owns.”
What do you do before going to sleep?
“The last thing I do before going to sleep? Either I read, or play games, or we chat.“
Do you play a sport?
“I do a little bit of sport, mainly racket sports, like ping-pong and padel.”
Do you have religious beliefs?
“I don’t believe in God.“
Who has had the most impact on your life?
“One person who changed my life is my wife. In particular, she taught me to delegate, since after seven years without taking a vacation, even just one day a year, she forced me to go to Mongolia for three weeks, there was no Internet connection there. And it taught me to delegate, because when I came back, I realized that the company was still doing well without me.“
What were the most difficult moments of your career?
“So the most difficult moment of my existence… In fact it’s several. These are the times when I was on the verge of bankruptcy. There were seven years, not in a row, two years by six, three years, two years. But these are very difficult times, since we no longer sleep at night, we have to work twice as hard. In addition to bringing in the money, you have to manage stress, work on strategy and pivot, since if you don’t have any more money, something is wrong. It’s pretty hard to put it all together.“
If you could change anything about your career, what would you do differently?
“What I would like to do differently is communicate about the company’s business model. I disappointed a lot of people, because I had to pivot, because I was too close to bankruptcy. I built an open source model, with free open source software, and I built a community on this vision of free. Except that I had to change my mind after a few years, because the business model wasn’t working, wasn’t working. And so I continued to do open source, because it’s my passion, but only 80% and I added 20% paid features to survive. Of course, I disappointed a lot of people. If I had communicated more effectively, by telling them ‘today we are open source, but tomorrow, there will perhaps be paid because we need it to survive’, the community would have followed us, I would not would not have disappointed them.“
What is your biggest dream?
“What big dream do I want to achieve? This is what I’m doing. Odoo is the way for me to put my two passions together. I’m a developer, I love it. I’m also passionate about management, so I read a lot of books on business management. And Odoo was the way to put the two together: management software for businesses.“
Are you happy?
“I think I’m one of the happiest entrepreneurs because I love what I do. I don’t feel like I’m working. I have an impact in the world, it really changes people’s lives at work. They are much more efficient, less hassle and it’s fun. I love what I do. It’s impactful and I’m doing it on a large scale, what more could you want?“
Do you plan to run Odoo for the rest of your life?
“Will I run Odoo all my life? Yes, probably, because I have nothing better to do. There is nothing better with this much impact that excites me, that transforms people. You have to imagine that people spend a third of their time in the office. So making tools so that these people can work better and more efficiently is really important.“
What will you do when you stop working?
“What will I do when I no longer work? It’s hard to say because I don’t know the body’s capabilities, but probably I will be dead.“
Odoo Fabien Pinckaers entrepreneur interview
