Duration: 23:27
🚀 The Entrepreneurial Journey: From Zero to €250M
Jeremy Jacquet shares his remarkable journey of building CBTW (Collaboration Betters The World) from a local Belgian consulting firm into a global tech company reaching €250 million in revenue over 10 years—without private equity. His father once told him that being a salesman would be "the worst case," and advised him to stay away from tech. Jeremy proved him wrong on both counts.
The path wasn't a straight line. It was a roller coaster of failures, lessons, and rapid rebounds. His core philosophy: fail fast, reborn faster. When you know what works, you must execute relentlessly and capitalize on every opportunity before your competitors do.
Jeremy emphasizes that growth isn't just about luck—it's about creating your own luck through preparation and speed. Like someone hunting for the perfect apartment, most people miss opportunities because they don't know exactly what they want or they hesitate waiting for something better. Jeremy's approach: know your sweet spot, recognize opportunities instantly, and move faster than anyone else.
💼 Four Certainties for Building a Global Company
Certainty #1: Sales and Delivery Come First
At the early stage, forget elaborate strategies and market plans. The only things that matter are how to sell and how to deliver. Jeremy uses Tesla as an example—great engineers, but without Elon Musk's sales prowess, it wouldn't be the same company. Everyone else in the company is secondary at the beginning. Focus on generating cash and repeating the process.
Strategy discussions are fine, but without mastering the fundamentals—the "principles of play"—you can't win. It's like football: if you can't make a pass, you can't play the game, regardless of how brilliant your tactical strategy is. Master your metrics: prospecting frequency, deal closure rates, networking events. When you control these fundamentals, success follows naturally.
Certainty #2: The Principle of Play
Know your metrics inside and out. How many prospecting calls do you need? How many meetings to close a deal? How many events to attend? When you master these fundamentals, you can sharpen your strategy effectively. Most importantly, be crystal clear about what you can deliver—never oversell, never underestimate. Stay in the sweet spot where you can satisfy every client.
Certainty #3: Management is Your Growth Limit
You can run a nice local Belgian company with one or two managers, but if you want to scale globally, you need to generate your own management pipeline. Jeremy discovered his strengths: he's excellent at training people from zero to five years of experience (building company culture) and recruiting senior leaders with 20+ years of experience (who can take ownership of regions or practices). The middle range? Not his forte, and he knows it.
Developing managers from within is essential for international expansion. Jeremy gives the example of someone who started in Luxembourg, then opened Canada, and later Colombia—all before turning 35. Without creating opportunities for your best people, they'll leave. Belgium is small, so Jeremy expanded to France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Germany to retain top talent and provide growth paths.
His company hit a ceiling at €250 million because he didn't generate enough management capacity during COVID. This limitation is real, and he admits it openly: your management capability is your company's growth limit.
Certainty #4: Cash is Freedom
Cash is king. Jeremy and his two partners started with their own money, took zero private equity funding, and reinvested 100% of profits back into the company from day one. No dividends, ever. This gave them complete freedom to acquire companies and expand globally without external agendas.
Banks can be helpful leverage when things are good, but beware—they can turn quickly when times are tough. Choose your banker carefully; the right one makes a huge difference. When you make acquisitions in new countries, you gain access to new banks and can leverage knowledge across geographies, creating synergies between Germany, Belgium, France, and beyond.
🧠 Company Culture: The Invisible Foundation
Jeremy's company motto is "Collaboration Betters The World"—and it's not just marketing. True collaboration requires everyone to be their best selves: educated, self-aware, understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and respectful of others' perspectives.
You can hire the best consultants from McKinsey or BCG, but without a strong company culture, you can't execute. It's impossible. Culture trumps strategy every time. Like Odoo, which exemplifies outstanding company culture, Jeremy has experienced ups and downs building his culture, but it remains the cornerstone of success.
⚙️ Daring to Dream Big
Belgium is a small country, but Belgians have a unique advantage: they're culturally adaptive, accustomed to working with diverse neighbors. Jeremy's advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is straightforward:
- Ideas are only 2% of success. Execution is everything.
- If you can sell and deliver, you can start. Don't wait for the perfect idea.
- Start small—try selling in the evenings or early mornings while keeping your day job. Test the market.
- When you see traction, don't hesitate. Go all in.
Americans are famous for overselling (Jeremy learned this the hard way in a US acquisition), but there's a lesson there: confidence matters. Don't undersell yourself.
Repetition is crucial. The first year, you learn a lot. The second year, less. By the third year, you're not learning anymore—you're executing. This is the critical moment between years two and three when you must double down on effort. It's like fitness or dieting: the first week is exciting, the second is harder, and by the third week, discipline determines success.
If Jeremy and his team forgot to keep repeating their fundamentals in 2023-2024, sales declined and motivation dropped. Yes, the market was tough, but that wasn't the full story. He admits: he failed to keep the team executing on the basics.
💬 Relationships and Networking
Selling is about relationships. Email lists and digital marketing have their place, but nothing replaces face-to-face connections. Attend networking events like Odoo Experience. Meet people. Build trust. That's where deals happen.
Jeremy never imagined running a company bigger than €10 million when he was a student. It wasn't in his dreams or expectations. But by doing—by taking one step forward, then another—he discovered his own capabilities. He didn't overthink it; he just acted.
His advice: reach for the stars. Even if you only reach the moon, you'll be far outside your comfort zone—and that's where growth happens. Don't hesitate to discover your own limits. Be open, transparent, and surround yourself with good advisors.
Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
Jeremy's story resonates deeply with the Odoo philosophy. He built a global company not through complexity, but by mastering simplicity: sell, deliver, repeat. This is exactly what we believe—business software should empower people to focus on what matters rather than getting lost in bureaucracy or over-engineered systems. His emphasis on company culture and collaboration mirrors what we've always championed: integrated tools that bring teams together, remove silos, and enable transparency. And his refusal to take private equity, choosing freedom over external pressures? That's the entrepreneurial spirit we admire. When people have the right tools and the right culture, they can achieve remarkable things—even from a small country like Belgium.
Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Jeremy's trajectory is impressive, particularly the discipline of reinvesting all profits and scaling without private equity. However, reaching €250M and hitting a management capacity ceiling highlights a challenge many mid-market firms face: the leap from founder-led execution to enterprise-grade institutional management. Large-scale digital transformation at global enterprises requires not just cultural cohesion but robust governance frameworks, compliance infrastructure, and deep vertical expertise. While his principles of sales and delivery excellence are admirable, the next phase of growth typically demands sophisticated tooling, change management methodologies, and ecosystem partnerships that established platforms provide. His candid acknowledgment of limitations is refreshing—it suggests a readiness to evolve structures and potentially integrate more formalized operational frameworks to sustain momentum at scale.
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.