Eleftherios Diakomichalis believes that he can compete with Microsoft. At least that’s what Radicle does, a startup company that has created a secure, independent, and decentralized network for engineers that aims to end their dependence on Microsoft’s GitHub. Studying statistics at ASOEE and having an interest in technology, manifested itself from adolescence. Lefteris Diakomichalis grew up in Athens but lived abroad from a young age, at the age of 22, he completed his postgraduate studies in the Netherlands and then spent six months in the United States before arriving in Berlin in 2011.
Music and Technology
“I was trying to bring together everything I love, namely technology and music,” he tells Outliers, Endeavor Greece podcast with media partner MoneyReview, describing how he found himself working at SoundCloud when it was just a small startup, with 15 staff. The fact that he, himself, is an amateur musician in his spare time, strengthened his interest in the company.
SoundCloud grew a lot and he stayed with the company for 6.5 years. Responsible for data science and data engineering, he managed to lead three different teams with 50 staff members, until 2016 when he started to feel bored. “Nothing new was happening,” he says. It was at this time that he started working with cryptonetworks. After all, as he says, Berlin has a big crypto scene.
How the idea took off
Although the cryptocurrency market was in a bear market at the time, and few people were engaged with it, Diakomichalis was convinced of the prospects these networks have. When he discussed the idea with one of the co-founders of SoundCloud, he told him that he needed $ 100 million just to implement it, but this did not discourage him. In 2017, Diakomichalis decided to leave his job because he believed in his idea, and how different it is from the status quo. Radicle started hiring in March 2018 and in February 2019 and the first version of Radicle was released. In the process, the company completed its peer-to-peer network with ethereum and released a token, RAD, its owners which essentially decide what happens inside the Radicle.
The company made its first round of financing in 2018, from which it raised $ 2 million and in the summer of 2019 “raised” $ 5 million. A round of financing followed with major investors, such as NFX, Galaxy Venture Capital, and Balaji Srinivasan. And when the token came out, its holders decided to make a token sale, from which they raised $ 25 million. Today, about 5,500 people own the RAD token, with Diakomichalis explaining that some of them are investors, some are cryptocurrency players but many are Radicle users who believe in the idea and want to participate in this way.