Odoo was hailed as a game-changer for Buffalo when it chose the city as its eastern U.S. hub last year.
It is on its way to proving the case.
The company, which is based in Belgium and also has an office in San Francisco, announced today it closed on a $215 million round of venture capital led by Summit Partners.
The deal valued Odoo at $2.3 billion, according to TechCrunch, officially making the company a “unicorn,” the term for software companies with private-market valuations that eclipse $1 billion.
In the meantime, Odoo is now the market leader in open source business management software, and among the top firms in traditional management software, competing alongside such companies as Oracle and Netsuite.
It’s also growing at a manic pace out of its Buffalo office in Seneca One Tower. Most of its 70-person local team has been hired in 2021 across functions that include software development, technical support, business systems analysts, sales personnel and human resources.
“We’ll continue to hire at an aggressive rate for the foreseeable future,” said Nicholas Kosinski, who leads the team in Buffalo.
The Western New York native, as well as aggressive recruitment effort by local business leaders, sold Odoo management on Buffalo. The region’s talent pool, affordability and enthusiasm for big tech projects all played a role in the effort. The Start-Up NY tax breaks program helped, too.
So is Buffalo living up to its lofty sales effort? Kosinski said company leaders are “ecstatic.”
“They can’t believe we’re able to recruit so many vibrant, smart people at such a rapid pace,” he said. “The test scores we give internally to our new hires are higher than anywhere else in North America, and our retention rate is 98%.”
Kosinski said he expects Odoo to be at 300 employees in Buffalo within the next three or four years. The company is operating on a hybrid model in Buffalo, with employees working from the office three days a week.
Kosinski sees Odoo as part of a broader movement to make tech a primary economic force in Buffalo.
“There’s so much good happening in this community,” he said. “That’s how we get there. We have to believe in it.”
