- The roadshow is doubling: Odoo ran 47 free Business Shows across the US in 2026 and plans roughly twice that in 2027. Great bet. But one room is serving four audiences, and the buyers are the hardest ones to get through the door.
- Fabien broke €100M in a month: €113M invoiced in September, and he says Q4 is "by far the best quarter."
- Odoo 20's bill has new lines: AI credits, Light Users, and Odoo Phone Service. Price the meters before you schedule the upgrade.
- NetSuite is now free for tech startups: QuickStart gives eligible US tech startups up to five users at no cost, with AI agents and MCP access from Claude and ChatGPT.
- The OCA is moving to 20.0 in bulk: 351 PRs tagged 20.0 in three weeks, and roughly 50 migration trackers opened in a single day.
- The app store hit 97,531 modules, up 4,178 in 19 days.
- Prefer video? Watch the 5-minute version on YouTube.
I just got back from the NYC Roadshow. 350+ RSVPs, about 60 came, and I spoke with six people actually exploring Odoo. Everyone else was a partner, a vendor, or a student. I promised a longer piece on what roadshows are for. Here's the short version.
Odoo Is Doubling Its Roadshow. Here's How to Make It Count
First, a thank-you. Odoo ran 47 free Business Shows across the US in 2026, and next year the calendar roughly doubles. Most software companies would run webinars instead. I've been to 11 of these shows, and I'm building my business on the back of them.
So the question is simple: who is the roadshow for?
Four audiences, one room. Users, partners, students, and people selling services to everyone else. When I asked Odoo's events team how they measure success, the answer was that it depends on the city. That's not a KPI. Pick one target per show, set one number for it, and let the city, venue, and agenda follow.
The shows are in the wrong part of town. 35 of the 47 were in downtown hotels, i.e. not close enough to where the manufacturers and distribution companies live. Upstate South Carolina, Northern Indiana, Alabama, and the Inland Empire, each with roughly 95,000 to 149,000 manufacturing jobs, got no show at all in the last two years. Neither did Memphis, where 14% of jobs are in transportation and warehousing, home of the FedEx World Hub.
The content and the reach. Eight hours of beginner accounting doesn't serve buyers or existing users. Make it half a day, with tracks and case studies. And the owner about to buy 30 licenses isn't finding their next ERP on Instagram. Use Odoo's outbound team in Buffalo, chambers of commerce, and industry associations.
The full piece, with sources and city-by-city numbers: Odoo Is Doubling Its Roadshow. Here's How to Make It Count.
The more automated the inbox gets, the more a room full of real people is worth. Pick who each show is for, and twice as many shows becomes twice as many buyers, not twice as many partners.
Fabien broke the €100M monthly barrier: €113M invoiced in September, per Fabien's LinkedIn post. "Q4 will be interesting: it's by far the best quarter. (records are usually in December, not September)." Nobody seems to be balking at the price hike yet.
Odoo 20's real price is in the meters. Octura's pre-release review found bring-your-own OpenAI and Gemini keys removed from 20.0, with every AI call routed through Odoo and billed in credits. The new phone system requires an Odoo Phone Service subscription, and the Field Service app is folded into Planning. Meanwhile, the Custom plan hike runs +20% in EUR, but US list stays at $49. These are pre-release observations, check them against your own database. My take on Light User hasn't changed: Odoo payroll covers 25 of 50 states, and when one activity triggers Light pricing, the incentive is to pull that activity out of Odoo. Expense management comes to mind.
NetSuite is now free for tech startups. NetSuite QuickStart, announced October 14, is free for eligible early-stage US tech startups: up to five users, one legal entity, 2,500 new business records, 800 emails, and 175 new documents a month. Accounting, AP, AR, basic inventory, and subscription billing, with the dashboard leading on cash, MRR, burn, and runway. Founders can run it from Claude, ChatGPT, or Slack via MCP. Setup is self-service, no implementation partner. Evan Goldberg's stated goal: "making NetSuite the first and last business system they will ever need." Oracle hasn't said what the move to full NetSuite costs, and that number is the whole game. It's the AWS-credits playbook: get in early, grow with the customer, collect later. It reads like a response to the new crowd courting founders: Puzzle and Digits at the bottom, AI-native ERPs Rillet and Campfire waiting at graduation. Tech startups aren't Odoo's ICP. They care about burn and runway reporting, not landed costs. Still, NetSuite is a name brand, and when it makes a move, it's worth paying attention to.
Everyone else is opening their data to outside AI. Business Central 2026 wave 2 added read-only MCP tools, Acumatica 2026 R2 lets admins expose inquiries to Claude and ChatGPT via MCP, and Shopify opened its 1B+ product catalog to any AI agent. Odoo 20 went the other way: its AI, its credits, its model.
The OCA is moving to 20.0 in bulk. 351 PRs with "[20.0]" in the title in three weeks, and roughly 50 migration trackers opened across repos on a single day. OpenUpgrade's 20.0 checklist is the one to watch if you're planning a Community upgrade.
The US partner bench is getting deeper. Kevin Zaki (5.5 years at Odoo) launched Deploy Systems, Zelifcam in San Antonio became an official partner, and Boston's Cudio partnered with Taxwire on managed sales tax inside Odoo.
Two free modules from 19 Prince. Flat blog URLs: Odoo 302s /blog to /blog/blog-1, and a website redirect can't fix it; this module serves clean URLs and 301s the old ones. Undo unsubscribe: Odoo has no undo for a mistaken click. Building it surfaced two things worth checking on your own database: the preferences page shows every "Show In Preferences" list to every reader, and a mailing with no list attached can't unsubscribe anyone. Both modules support Odoo 18, 19, and 20.
The app store hit 97,531 modules, up 4,178 from 93,353 in 19 days, about 1,540 a week.
This issue is sponsored by OLaunch, tools for Odoo partners: accounting conversions (QuickBooks, Xero, Sage 50, and MYOB, with full history, ready for Odoo 20; practice conversions are free, you pay at go-live), health checks, and QA tooling.
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Cheers!
Darren from 19 Prince