Odoo chose Buffalo as the place for substantial North American growth

Now, the business software company is guaranteeing to New York State – in exchange for much of the space inside 40 Fountain Plaza – that it will grow by another 350 employees by 2028. It is poised to triple its space and then its size in Buffalo.

So how has the company grown so quickly here?

It comes down to the demand for the business application software and the commitment to Buffalo as a place where the company can provide needed services to support that increase in business.

The 20-year-old Belgian-based company has its North American headquarters in San Francisco. Its main product is integrated business applications tailored for small- and medium-sized businesses. It’s been growing at an over 60%-plus clip annually for the last six years.

Odoo’s private investors have valued the company at more than $3 billion, two years after it reached “unicorn” status – when a startup is first valued at more than $1 billion.

“The numbers don’t lie, and the growth is there, and our hiring strategy obviously reflects those numbers,” said Nick Kosinski, the managing director of US East at Odoo.

And Odoo is not just bringing any old jobs to Buffalo and its undersized tech sector.

“You’re coming into this role and you’re going be learning a lot of cool stuff out of the gate and skills that are going to be relevant 10 to 15 years from now,” said Kosinski, a Williamsville native. “That goes a long way.”

Odoo recently purchased seven floors at 40 Fountain Plaza – space that the state originally acquired for an IBM innovation center that never lived up to its lofty promises to create 350 high-paying, high-tech jobs.

Instead, as IBM shrunk its Buffalo operations, the state sold that space to Odoo for $1 – in exchange for a job creation target of 70 new positions each year over the next five years. IBM will soon…