My Story
Angelo Sotira (born February 14, 1981) is a Greek-American entrepreneur who co-founded the online community DeviantArt on August 7, 2000 at the age of 19. But this wasn't his first company. Four years earlier he started a music file-sharing site called Dimension Music. He sold it to Michael Ovitz in 1999, coming off of his stints at Disney and the Creative Artists Agency. Angelo worked the next two years at Ovtiz's Artists Management Group & Lynx Technology Group (Ovitz's Internet Investment arm) where he advised on how those companies could best strategically integrate the opportunities from the emerging commercial applications of the Internet. [1]
Angelo served on the senior management team of Wix as a VP, after Wix acquired DeviantArt for $36M in 2017. While there he oversaw the relaunch of DeviantArt into DeviantArt Eclipse, while contributing to community strategy for Wix.com, the leading platform for website creation. He stepped down from his role in April 2022, exactly 22 years after founding DeviantArt in April of 2000.
In 2018 Angelo co-founded Tequila Komos with close friends Richard Betts, Joe Marchese and Alexia Bonatsos. As of 2023, Tequila Komos is the 3rd best selling, fastest growing luxury tequila in the United States, and expanding quickly into international markets.
He's currently working on a new project that's yet to be announced, after spending time at the Expa incubator and design studio. An expert in building communities, Angelo's passion is in designing products that facilitate meaningful connection with creative people.