Odoo vs Zoho vs Microsoft : Building Odoo into a 433 million dollar company? : IBP EP12 — Think School: Indian Business Podcast Summary | Galaxy of Podcasts

Think School: Indian Business Podcast

Odoo vs Zoho vs Microsoft : Building Odoo into a 433 million dollar company? : IBP EP12

Odoo founder Fabien Pinckaers talks with Ganesh Prasad about building business software for small and mid-sized companies, watching users to find wasted work, avoiding competitor-driven thinking, and marketing through free educational events. The host says Odoo sponsors Think School, so this is a commercially interested conversation, and sponsor pitches are not treated as recommendations. Coverage comes from approximately the first 50,000 characters of third-party captions, not the full interview; the unseen ending is not summarized. Growth, event and conversion figures are the guest's claims and not independently checked. Captions contain errors and no named speakers; attribution follows the exchange. Topics are untimed; metadata follows YouTube. Source: https://youtubetotranscript.com/transcript?v=CA-qqh5_g0c

9 min read1h 16m episode12 Aug 2024

Listen to Original Episode

Business

Odoo vs Zoho vs Microsoft : Building Odoo into a 433 million dollar company? : IBP EP12

Executive Summary (TL;DR)

Key Takeaways

Start with the wasted work, not the competitor

The Conversation Breakdown

Start with the wasted work, not the competitor

⏱ Untimed topic

Pinckaers says he did not think about competing with large enterprise software vendors. He wanted to fix the time small companies waste on administration and repeated data entry. His account puts a customer problem ahead of a market comparison.

Sit next to the user and watch

⏱ Untimed topic

He says his method is to sit beside employees and see where time goes, for example a recruiter spending half their email on scheduling meetings or an accountant typing vendor bills all day. Observation showed him what could be automated. This is his description of how his team found product ideas.

Build for every employee, not only managers

⏱ Untimed topic

Pinckaers says early on the company decided management software is not for managers, and aimed to make each employee, from cashier to accountant, more efficient. Dashboards for managers come after. The idea is to measure a tool by the people who use it daily.

Fill the gap between complex and simple tools

⏱ Untimed topic

He describes large enterprise systems as too complex and rigid for smaller firms, and single-purpose tools as not connected. His intended gap is a broad product that is simple and affordable. This is a claim about his market, from a company that has a commercial interest.

Start with a niche and iterate

⏱ Untimed topic

Pinckaers says the first customers were auction houses and antique dealers, where better inventory handling cut how often a product was moved. He then iterated for years across more use cases. A narrow starting market can teach you what to build next.

Let happy users be the marketing

⏱ Untimed topic

He says the best marketing is no marketing, meaning a good product, service and follow-up that makes customers bring others. He also says the company avoids logo sponsorships and traditional advertising. Treat that as his stated strategy, not proof this works for every company.

Educate through events rather than pitching

⏱ Untimed topic

Pinckaers describes about 80 events a year in India and a two-day free community event with around 200 sessions and demos in real time. He says the partner network doubled within two months of the previous event and that 20 to 30 percent of registrants may convert. These are his figures.

Odoo vs Zoho vs Microsoft : Building Odoo into a 433 million dollar company? : IBP EP12

Executive Summary (TL;DR)

Key Takeaways

Start with the wasted work, not the competitor

Sit next to the user and watch

Build for every employee, not only managers

Fill the gap between complex and simple tools

Start with a niche and iterate

Let happy users be the marketing

Educate through events rather than pitching

The Conversation Breakdown

Start with the wasted work, not the competitor

Sit next to the user and watch

Build for every employee, not only managers

Fill the gap between complex and simple tools

Start with a niche and iterate

Let happy users be the marketing

Educate through events rather than pitching

Core Frameworks & Ideas

Observe users at work - discussed method

Simple and complete - guest's positioning

Educate to convert users into fans - marketing lens

Actionable Next Steps

Notable Quotes

The One Thing to Remember