Michael Petychakis: From the Humanoids in the desert at the oasis of the Music Industry

A Greek-American startup having its headquarters in Malibou and its R&D department in Athens ensures that creators of the music industry receive a fair proportion of streaming royalties while retaining copyright of their work in the wonderful new digital world. The startup is no other than Orfium, which has already been up and running for 6 years, and among its clients are leading music publishers and record companies, such as Warner, Sony and Universal. 

Michael Petychakis, the CTO of the company, talked to Outliers, Endeavor Greece’s podcast series, whose media partner is MoneyReview, about how the idea to form the company was born, how it evolved and what are their plans for the future. As far as he is concerned, his entering the world of the music industry was not self-evident. He started studying civil engineering at the Technical University of Athens, and after 2-3 years when he was no longer inspired by his studies, he claimed a scholarship, that took him in Dubai. There he started creating humanoid robots in the desert. “It was a great experience…  but it became obvious to me that the field that interested me most in robotics was the one of Artificial Intelligence (AI),” he says. So he returned to Greece, he graduated and founded his first startup in the area of the social media. It was an application, that enabled the user to share how they felt by using a photo and an emoticon. It went well, it received a positive response from the public, but it was difficult for such a company to attract funds in our country. However, this experience taught me how to “run” a team. 

Mr. Petychakis decided to abandon his first venture and started a PhD in artificial intelligence. He travelled, he gathered new ideas and experiences, and when the 2015 crisis knocked on Greece’s door and the future of the EU seemed uncertain, a proposal came from America. It was from Orfium, which was initially deemed to be an application competitive to SoundCloud. “I didn’t like the idea at all. After all, there was Spotify. However, I relished the idea of working with an American company. I wanted to open the door to something new in the United States,” he says.  

The big change for Orfium came when Rob came along the way, a former executive of Orfium, who takes credit to a large excent for Spotify’s success. He persuaded them to overhaul their model and become a B2B company, a company that provides services to other companies. 

“We gave ourselves 3 months’ time to test the new model and in the end we managed to sign our first contract.” What is Orfium about?

It daily scans YouTube for uploaded videos that generate royalties and pinpoints  loss of revenue from copyrighted work. Its greatest asset are the algorithms. It develops new original algorithms that meet the needs of the music industry. 

Apart from its headquarters in Malibu and its R&D department in Greece, Orfium holds an office in London, and is present in Berlin and Vietnam as well. How did it get there? “At stage A, Orfium was hacked from Vietnam. We went there to meet them and there was a mutual liking.” The previous year was decisive year for the company. “We were more mature, we realized what the market needed from us.” Now, the company is at its third phase and its aims is to add value to all the entertainment industry. 

Throughout his career, Michael Petychakis’ greatest passion is technology and AI. He believes that the cooperation between AI and human beings will the major trend in the following years. It will be a major advantage, he claims, if human beings and humanoids work together and complement each other.