From touring musician to tech founder, Vito Peleg has taken an unconventional path into the world of digital agencies. As the Founder and CEO of Atarim, he’s built an AI-powered platform helping agencies streamline collaboration and deliver projects faster. Today, it’s used by tens of thousands of agencies and major hosting companies worldwide.
Briefly introduce yourself to any of our readers who may not know you yet
Hey everyone, I’m Vito, founder and CEO of Atarim.
I built my first website when I was 14, back on Geocities, for a band I was playing in as a teenager. That experience kind of turned into a dual life throughout my twenties. On one side I was building websites, and on the other I was a touring musician across Europe. I released two albums during that time and I still play today with the CloudFest band, Lords of Uptime. We actually just played CloudFest Europe a couple of weeks ago! That’s my “once a year” opportunity to rock out and I love it.
Once I turned 30 it stopped being fun to live in a smelly van with four other guys. So I settled down in London and started building a web agency, which scaled pretty quickly. Through the inefficiencies of running that agency, I started building internal tools that eventually led me to building Atarim.
Today Atarim is an entire operating system for digital agency fulfillment. It is the first AI powered platform designed to manage the collaboration, workflow, and delivery of website projects. Today we work with tens of thousands of agencies and some of the largest hosting companies in the world for their DIFM operations.
From touring musician to web agency founder. When did you realize there was a gap and how did you decide Atarim was the solution?
Running a web agency was incredibly rewarding, but it also exposed a lot of inefficiencies in the way teams and clients collaborate on websites and creative projects. Most of our time was not actually spent building sites. It was spent chasing feedback, managing messy email threads, deciphering screenshots, and trying to keep everyone aligned. It felt crazy that such a core part of the process did not have a proper system.
The realization came after repeating the same frustrating workflow project after project. I kept thinking, “Why can’t they just click any part of the page and leave a comment right there?”
That question became the seed for Atarim.
While design tools focus on the creation side of the process, we focus on collaboration and workflow management for creative projects. The goal is to remove the friction between teams and clients so agencies and fulfillment teams can deliver projects in half the time instead of burning out through the chaos.
What inspired you to launch the Web Agency Summit and what do you hope folks take away from the four day program?
This event started during COVID. I have always loved the community around WordPress and the broader website ecosystem. When COVID hit, WordCamp Asia was supposed to happen and it ended up getting cancelled. That sparked the idea of why we could not just keep the party going, but do it virtually.
So I stayed up for about two weeks straight and built a platform to run the event. We thought maybe 300 people would show up, but in the first year we had over 3,000 attendees join us. We also had incredible partners jump in right away, including brands like GoDaddy, WP Engine, and Elementor.
From there it became a yearly celebration of the agency space.
Most events in the space focus on the technical side of building websites, the next plugin, the next widget, or the next line of code. Our focus has always been on the business side.
How do you hire? How do you scale? What does a healthy delivery system look like? What are the best acquisition strategies? How do you build a real agency business around this work?
Over the years it has grown into the largest online event in the agency space.
This year our keynote speakers include Mary Hubbard, the Executive Director of WordPress, and Eugene Levin, President of Semrush. They will both be sharing their perspectives on where the agency ecosystem is heading.
In fact, one question we are asking every speaker this year is very simple. Where do you think this space is going in the next two years?
If you want to hear the answers to that question, the Web Agency Summit is the place to be. (https://atarim.io/summit)
What did you think about the move to Miami and what excites you about the future of CloudFest Americas?
I have been attending CloudFest Europe for years now, and that is where I really got to know many of our partners, investors, and people in the hosting ecosystem.
The first time I attended CloudFest Americas was last year, and I think the move to Miami changed the event in a few important ways. First, it is not just sitting inside a hotel lobby. The new venue and the city itself adds personality and energy to the event, which is something I love about CloudFest Europe as well.
Second, there were many more relevant people in the room for the conversations I was having. A lot of the hosting companies there are focused on serving agencies or SMB customers, which aligns closely with the ecosystem we work in.
Overall it felt like the event gained a new energy and vibe that was missing from the previous hotel based format. I am really excited to see how it continues to evolve over the next few years.
If you could program your own fireside chat with one person, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
This might sound a bit corny, but I would love to sit down with Steve Jobs for 30 minutes. I have always admired his product first approach and the way he thought about design and simplicity.
Coming from a background in product and design myself, and now running a scaling company, I would love to hear how he balanced operational scale with deep product obsession.
I would especially love to dive into how he thought about focus. How do you say no to a thousand ideas so you can build one truly great thing?
That mindset is incredibly relevant for founders today, especially in a world where everything moves so fast and distractions are everywhere.
Web Agency Summit Is Back – Apr 27-30, Free and Online
Web Agency Summit is back, April 27-30: four days of free, live and interactive sessions built for the people who run and grow web agencies. Over 40 talks on winning better clients, protecting your margins, scaling delivery, and using AI where it moves the needle.
Eugene Levin at Semrush.
Mary Hubbard at WordPress.org.
Karim Marucchi from Crowd Favorite.
Manish Dudharejia from E2M.
…and dozens more speakers announcing in the coming days.
Last year, thousands of owners from 120+ countries joined to learn how to make their agency unstoppable. The biggest online event in the agency space is nearly here. Register for free today!
