这是一篇有年头的文章了。刚好这段时间和 sap （也是我的老东家......） 在pk，顺便找了出来重温下。
2005年，odoo的创始人Fabien Pinckaers（FP）开始研发TinyErp，希望改变商业世界，2006年他注册了“sorrysap.com”的域名，为自己定下了一个小目标。后来此文被翻译发表在openerp论坛（已关闭），一起来看看 odoo 曾经的梦想岁月。
原文地址： https://www.odoo.com/zh_CN/blog/odoo-news-5/post/the-odoo-story-56
当然，你也可以看看 odoo 还算不错的现在，和会更好的将来。
odoo13前瞻-我们为什么要做企业版与社区版-来自odoo创始人Fabien Pinckaers的官宣
https://www.odooai.cn/odoo13-overview-preview-why-enterprise-community/
（时代的车轮滚滚向前，没有谁能回到过去，也没有什么是过不去的）
让公司更好。用一套软件管理全部的业务
我要改变世界，我要。。。 还记得年少时的梦吗，天真却有张力。我的梦想就是让自由开源软件来引领企业管理市场。当然我也曾经梦想在我30岁之前拥有自己100名员工的公司，但我失败了。
为了加油鼓劲，我认识到必须给自己找个对手。商场如战场，如同你进了一所新的学校，要想迅速成为领导者，你必须选择挑战那个最强悍的常以强凌弱的大家伙，然后在众人面前把他打倒在地痛扁一顿。
因此，在2005年，我开始研发TinyERP来改变商业世界，至少在我认为他能改变世界。从那时起我就一直在为“决斗时刻”做着准备，2006年我注册 了“SorrySAP.com”(中文意思是“跟SAP说抱歉”)这个域名，在手里一放就是6年，悄然等待着决斗时刻的到来。本来设想花3年的时间就能打 倒这个市值770亿美元的家伙，因为在我认为自由开源真是太强大了，但有时在自我激励的同时你也必须要面对现实。
为了让梦想成真，我努力的工作，非常非常的努力。每天工作13个小时，一周工作7天没有任何假期。为此疏远了朋友并导致妻子离开了我，当然幸运的是又找到了一位价值更高的妻子，一会儿跟大家解释为什么我妻子能值百万欧元。
三年后，我发现如果你还是如名字“tiny”那样“小”的话你根本没法改变这个世界。特别是当美国仍是这个世界一部分的时候，那么最好还是成为一个 “BigERP（大ERP）”, 而不是“TinyERP(小ERP)”.当Danone（达能）总裁质问我：“我们为什么要花费几百万美元买一个小软件”时，你能体会到我的心情。所以， 我将他的名字由TinyERP改为了OpenERP.
随着我不断的努力，形势终于开始发生一些变化。我们为OpenERP开发了几百个模块,OE的开源社区也在不断增长，并且开始不再感到因付不起员工工资而恐惧了，你可以想象在长达四年的时间里每到月底发工资的时候我心里是多么的恐慌。
2010年，我们已经拥有了超过100家提供OpenERP咨询服务的合作伙伴，虽然形势喜人，但产品方面还是不让我足够满意。导致这个情况的原因就是过于注重给客户提供服务而不是创造卓越的产品。
所以是时候该在这个商业模式中找到一个核心竞争力出来了。
打造核心竞争力
我们希望成为一个发行软件商而不是咨询实施服务商。这就使得我们能持续投入和更好的注重研发活动。最终我们会改变我们的商业模式，停止对终端客户提供服务而是注重建立一个合作伙伴网络和运维支持。这需要很大的投资，所以我们不得不融资几百万欧元。
跟投资者几个月的接触后，我们与几家风投签署了大约10份合作意向协议，当中有欧洲最大的风投公司Sofinnova，还有Xavier Niel，他创立的Iliad资本是过去10年中唯一超过10亿欧元市值的法国基金公司。
我签下了意向合同， 却并没有意识到这可能将会让我穷的无家可归（除了一条跟随我的狗）。募资规模是基于对公司的现有估值的，但另有一个根据未来4年的公司营收将公司重估到 980万欧元的财务机制。如果我们的营收符合商业计划书所定之目标，我所获得的该数额认股权证将可转变为对应股份。
尚未在公证人面前接受认股权证之前的那天晚上，我的妻子查看了这些合同。她问我这些股权的税率情况，我叫来了律师，然后你猜什么情况？比利时或许是世界上 唯一对认股权征税的国家，即使你还没有将认股权证转换成实际的股权。假如我一旦接受了这些认股权证，那么我要为980万欧元支付12.5%的税，即在未来 18个月要支付120万欧元的税！所以我前面提到我妻子值百万欧元呢！要是没她我就真成无家可归的人了，你知道我当时身无分文。
最后我们修改了协议，我拿到了300万欧元，这能帮我维持一个管理团队。
2.jpg "对不起SAP，我要终结你！--OpenERP7.0发布之前")
更加成熟的公司运营
拿到这些钱之后，我们组建了两个部门：R&D(研发)和Sales(销售)。我们18个月内烧掉了两百万欧元，大部分用来支付了薪酬。公司开始进入快速发展阶段，我们在100个国家建立了超过500家合作伙伴的网络，并且开始与客户签署几百万美元的合同。
然后，事情变得复杂了一些，你知道，各种繁杂的事务包括人力资源、股东会议、客户签单以及全球各地分公司的启动，大量的议价谈判、职业规划和管理会议等等枯燥的工作要做。
2010和2011是忙乱的年份，但没有达到我们的营收预期：只达到了目标的70%。我们召开了密集的管理会议商讨我们的运营，因为我们对现状并不是很满意，只是感觉少了点什么，我们始终认为能够做一些超越平凡的事情但对自己的表现并不满意。
直到一天，有人（不记得了是谁了，我有着金鱼一样的脑子）做了一个过去2年内月度营收报表，那时我才感恶梦方醒。事实上，我们做的并没差到哪去，两年间我 们营收增加了10倍！当我认识到OpenERP的事业是一场马拉松而不是冲刺式短跑时，我的结论是如果能在未来几年保持这个节奏，就算是每年有100%的 增长也相当不错了。。。
OpenERP 月度营收报表
平时我是应该听我妻子的话，他比我清楚多了，我总是跟她报怨“还不够好，我们应该更快的扩张，我哪里出了问题吗？”，这时她就会安慰我“你们已经是比利时 发展速度最快的公司了！”（我们被Deloitte（德勤）以在2007到2011年内1549%的千倍营收增长速度评为比利时增速最快的公司）
改变世界
梦想已经开始变为现实，很多迹象证明我们能够改变这个世界：
世界正在发生变化。。。并且会是巨大的变化。
OpenERP 7.0即将发布正式版本，毫无疑问你会惊叹于她的神奇。
官方计划2012年12月21日发布7.0正式版，伴随着古玛雅人关于世界末日的传奇预言，这将是一个时代的终结，是那些如恐龙般丑陋的老旧ERP系统时代的终结！
是时候向敌人宣战了，亮剑我们磨砺6年的决斗王牌： www.SorrySAP.com
OpenERP创始人
Fabien Pinckaers
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以下是英文原文
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The Odoo Story
Making companies a better place. One app at a time.
I needed to change the world. I wanted to ... You know how it is when you are young; you have big dreams, a lot of energy and naive stupidity. My dream was to lead the enterprise management market with a fully open source software. (I also wanted to get 100 employees before 30 years old with a self-financed company but I failed this one by only a few months).
To fuel my motivation, I had to pick someone to fight against. In business, it's like a playground. When you arrive in a new school, if you want to quickly become the leader, you must choose the class bully, the older guy who terrorises small boys, and kick his butt in front of everyone. That was my strategy with SAP, the enterprise software giant.
So, in 2005, I started to develop the TinyERP product, the software that (at least in my mind) would change the enterprise world. While preparing for the "day of the fight" in 2006, I bought the SorrySAP.com domain name. I put it on hold for 6 years, waiting for the right moment to use it. I thought it would take 3 years to deprecate a 77 billion dollars company just because open source is so cool. Sometimes it's better for your self-motivation not to face reality...
To make things happen, I worked hard, very hard. I worked 13 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no vacations for 7 years. I lost friendships and broke up with my girlfriend in the process (fortunately, I found a more valuable wife now. I will explain later why she is worth 1 million EUR 
.
Three years later, I discovered you can't change the world if you are "tiny". Especially if the United States is part of this world, where it's better to be a BigERP, rather than a TinyERP. Can you imagine how small you feel in front of Danone's directors asking; "But why should we pay millions of dollars for a tiny software?" So, we renamed TinyERP to OpenERP.
As we worked hard, things started to evolve. We were developing dozens of modules for OpenERP, the open source community was growing and I was even able to pay all employees' salaries at the end of the month without fear (which was a situation I struggled with for 4 years).
In 2010, we had a 100+ employees company selling services on OpenERP and a powerful but ugly product. This is what happens when delivering services to customers distracts you from building an exceptional product.
It was time to do a pivot in the business model.
The Pivot
We wanted to switch from a service company to a software publisher company. This would allow to increase our efforts in our research and development activities. As a result, we changed our business model and decided to stop our services for customers and focus on building a strong partner network and maintenance offer. This would cost money, so I had to raise a few million euros.
After a few months of pitching investors, I got roughly 10 LOI from different VCs. We chosed Sofinnova Partners, the biggest European VC, and Xavier Niel the founder of Iliad, the only company in France funded in the past 10 years to have reached the 1 billion EUR valuation.
I signed the LOI. I didn't realize that this contract could have turned me into a homeless person. (I already had a dog, all I needed was to lose a lot of money to become homeless). The fundraising was based on a company valuation but there was a financial mechanism to re-evaluate the company up by 9.8 m€ depending on the turnover of the next 4 years. I should have received warrants convertible into shares if we achieved the turnover targeted in the business plan.
The night before receiving the warrants in front of the notary, my wife checked the contracts. She asked me what would be the taxation on these warrants. I rang the lawyer and guess what? Belgium is probably the only country in the world where you have to pay taxes on warrants when you receive them, even if you never reach the conditions to convert them into shares. If I had accepted these warrants, I would have had to pay a 12.5% tax on 9.8 m€; resulting in a tax of 1.2m€ to pay in 18 months! So, my wife is worth 1.2 million EUR. I would have ended up a homeless person without her, as I still did not have a salary at that time.
We changed the deal and I got the 3 million EUR. It allowed me to recruit a rocking management team.
Being a mature company
With this money in our bank account, we boosted two departments: R&D and Sales. We burned two million EUR in 18 months, mostly in salaries. The company started to grow even faster. We developed a partner network of 500 partners in 100 countries and we started to sign contracts with 6 zeros.
Then, things became different. You know, tedious things like handling human resources, board meetings, dealing with big customer contracts, traveling to launch international subsidiaries. We did boring stuff like budgets, career paths, management meetings, etc.
2011 was a complex year. We did not meet our expectations: we only achieved 70% of the forecasted sales budget. Our management meetings were tense. We under performed. We were not satisfied with ourselves. We had a constant feeling that we missed something. It's a strange feeling to build extraordinary things but to not be proud of ourselves.
But one day, someone (I don't remember who, I have a goldfish memory) made a graph of the monthly turnover of the past 2 years. It was like waking up from a nighmare. In fact, it was not that bad, we had multiplied the monthly turnover by 10 over the span of roughly two years! This is when we understood that OpenERP is a marathon, not a sprint. Only 100% growth a year is ok... if you can keep the rhythm for several years.
As usual, I should have listened to my wife. She is way more lucid than I am. Every week I complained to her "It's not good enough, we should grow faster, what am I missing?" and she used to reply: "But you already are the fastest growing company in Belgium!" (Deloitte awarded us as the fastest growing company of Belgium with 1549% growth of the turnover between 2007 and 2011)
Changing the world
Then, the dream started to become reality. We started to get clues that what we did would change the world:
- With 1.000 installations per day, we became the most installed management software in the world,
- Analysts from Big 4 started to prefer OpenERP over SAP,
- OpenERP is now a compulsory subject for the baccalaureate in France like Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- 60 new modules are released every month (we became the wikipedia of the management software thanks to our strong community)
- In 2013, we had 2.000.000 users worldwide
Something is happening... And it's big!
New financing in 2014
After years of rapid growth, we achieved another amazing goal - we secured a new round of USD 10 Millions of financing, jointly provided by leading venture capital firms XAnge (France), SRIW (Belgium), Sofinnova (France), and the management team.
The new financing will support the acceleration of the outstanding growth the company has seen over the last years, enabling the doubling of the commercial force and increased R&D staff - already 100+ people strong.
The rise of Odoo
After having disrupted the ERP market, OpenERP moved far beyond the boundaries of traditional ERP players. The integration of business activities is not anymore restricted to sales, accounting, inventory and procurements. In june 2014, we released version 8 with an awesome CMS & eCommerce, a Point of Sale, an integrated Business Intelligence engine and much more. (and 3000+ modules)
Our exceptional technology allowed us to move to newer markets (CMS & eCommerce) and propose a product that disrupt existing open source players (WordPress, Magento, etc). The OpenERP CMS is so good that even top competitors admited it publicly when we released the beta version.
If current open source players have a real technical challenge to follow us, we also have a huge marketing challenge. WordPress has 22% of all internet websites. We were the leader in management software, but we start with 0% of the website market.
To move forward, we raised USD 10 millions in may 2014 in order to boost marketing and sales activities. In order to support our vision, we had to change the name that is not restricted to ERPs functions. We needed a name that allows to support our ambitions; build business solutions like CMS, eCommerce, Business Intelligence and, who knows, even sky rockets or driverless cars in the future...
In may 2014, we rename the company and product to Odoo. And a new story just started...
Fabien Pinckaers
Odoo Founder & CEO
