About Us
Radical.World is a vision and a movement for a future of life and work beyond the constraints of today’s Fiat system of dominance and control. Our purpose is to create a world that truly serves people, empowering communities and organizations to thrive through collaboration rather than coercion. We believe the way we currently work and live has reached a critical point — it’s time to take a new path.
At Radical.World, we are building tools to support a collaborative way of living and working, rooted in genuine well-being for individuals and communities alike. We recognize that true Radical Companies cannot flourish within the boundaries of Fiat communities and outdated worldviews. Our projects are designed to bring forward tools that illuminate our shared humanity and open the door to a future of cooperative communities and self-managed organizations. Together, we can create a world that aligns with the needs of life itself.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has." — Margaret Mead
Our History
Radical.World began as an idea sparked by two unique, yet remarkably similar journeys — the stories of Matt Perez and Jose Leal. Matt, a seasoned computer engineer, and Jose, a serial entrepreneur who launched his first business at sixteen, each spent time in corporate leadership. Matt led a team of developers at Sun Microsystems in California, while Jose served as Vice President and General Manager at Canoe.ca, the online arm of Quebecor/Sun Media in Canada. Both eventually left the corporate world to build their own organizations. Matt co-founded Nearsoft, a nearshoring company that became a self-management leader, while Jose co-founded wikiDOMO, a marketing company designed to empower people. Though wikiDOMO never broke into the market — a reality Jose attributes to his corporate mindset and loss of confidence — Nearsoft thrived and ultimately established a pioneering presence in self-managed work.
Years later, after selling Nearsoft, Jose was introduced to Matt by Doug Kirkpatrick, a key figure in the self-management movement. Doug saw in both Matt and Jose a shared vision for the future of work. Jose had been on his own journey of introspection, seeking to understand the personal impacts of his time in corporate life and researching what truly drives human motivation. When they met, Matt and Jose immediately connected, sensing that self-management was only part of the picture — there was a need for something deeper, a connection to core human needs.
Their weekly conversations led to a transformative concept: Radical, a term that captured the essence of returning to the root of human motivation and connection, far beyond standard management practices. Jose's work with Radical Purpose, a framework he developed to help individuals understand the life needs driving them, was grounded in the idea that meaningful change in work could not come from ideology but from acknowledging the fundamental life needs that guide us. Jose’s workshops and the free Radical Purpose Profile tool was used across North and South America, helping people uncover what truly drives them.
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Matt is on the far left and Jose is second from the right.
A pivotal moment came when Jose invited Matt to the annual cooperative conference in California, where Matt recognized that for companies to be truly radical, co-management alone was not enough; co-ownership was equally essential. This realization became central to the book Radical Companies, which they co-authored with Matt’s son, Adrian Perez.
As they continued to work with organizations in Mexico and the United States, their ideas evolved. They saw Radical not only as a new way of working but as a way to view life itself — a way to counter the dominance of what they call the Fiat Lens, a societal structure based on control and conditioned acceptance of authority. In contrast, the Radical Lens represents our innate ability to perceive and fulfill our fundamental needs, a lens through which we reclaim our autonomy and purpose.
This vision gave rise to Radical.World — an endeavor to create a world where work and life align with our deepest life needs. As they and their growing team realized, we need not only Radical Companies but a Radical World.