Odoo hit a major milestone in late 2021 – hiring its 100th employee in Buffalo.
The company’s new goals are much bigger.
The global business management software firm plans to hire 100 to 125 people in Buffalo this year, doubling the company’s local team.
Odoo is planning to double its real estate footprint in Buffalo as well. The company hopes to move into an entire new floor at Seneca One Tower in the first quarter of this year. It already occupies all of the 26th floor at the tower, which is being redeveloped by developer Douglas Jemal as a destination for technology employers.
“We’re finding really smart people here who are eager to break into the industry and make their mark,” said Nick Kosinski, director of Odoo’s office in Buffalo. “All of our theories about moving into Buffalo are turning out better in practice.”
The Belgium-based software company builds software tools for small- and mid-sized businesses. Odoo’s official U.S. headquarters is in San Francisco, but the company announced in early 2020 that it had chosen Buffalo for its second domestic hub.
Odoo raised $215 million in venture capital in 2021 at a value of $2.3 billion, and company executives have said the company is growing expansively. In a LinkedIn post this week, CEO Fabien Pinckaers said the company’s billing was up 73% last year.
Kosinski said Odoo is winning customers away from the major corporations that dominate back-end business software because of its integrated suite of tools. From sales to accounting to inventory, Odoo software tools “talk” to one another.
“Those are very important things because business software these days is very fragmented,” Kosinski said. “You buy one software for inventory and a totally different software for sales, and small businesses can’t afford to integrate them. So you’re stuck entering the same information into two different places.”
Odoo is now hiring across nine teams in Buffalo, including sales, customer success, recruitment, administration and engineering. While it currently only has two software engineers in Buffalo, the company is planning to scale its local software team to 50 people in the first half of 2022.
Odoo is still working on the details of its expanded real estate footprint in the tower, including which floor it will take, but the company hopes to move within the next three months, Kosinski said. It plans to fill the entire floor with employees by the end of this year.
Kosinski said this year’s goals amount to a corporate nod of confidence in what Odoo has accomplished in Buffalo thus far. The company hasn’t just found high-quality candidates; it boasts an 85% retention rate at a time of tremendous workforce uncertainty.
If all goes according to plan, Odoo will have between 200 to 225 employees in Buffalo by the end of the year. Kosinski said it’s just the start of what the company’s building here.
“People in Buffalo are learning what it takes to be successful in their roles, and that translates to delivery on their key performance indicators,” he said. “That translates to the growth of this business.”
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