From Rock Bands to AI Agents: The Unlikely Journey of a Creative Tech Entrepreneur

What do a struggling rock band and a multi-million-dollar tech startup have in common? It’s a question that might seem like the beginning of an elaborate joke, but for Vito Peleg, CEO and co-founder of Atarim, the answer is profoundly serious and surprisingly insightful. “A band,” he explains on a recent episode of the Project Flux podcast, “is a startup with no budget and no audience. It’s a commoditised offering that no one really wants and you’re trying to shove it down people’s throats.” This single, provocative statement encapsulates a journey that is as unconventional as it is inspiring—a journey from the sticky floors of music venues to the polished world of software as a service, and now, to the very frontier of artificial intelligence.

Peleg’s story is a testament to the winding, unpredictable path of a modern creative career. Long before he was helming a company used by over 69,000 teams worldwide, he was a musician, learning the hard-won lessons of grit, guerrilla marketing, and bootstrapping. The need to be inventive when you have no resources, to create something from nothing, and to relentlessly pursue an audience that doesn’t yet know it needs you—these were the skills forged not in a business school lecture hall, but in the back of a tour van. This experience, it turns out, was the perfect training ground for the world of tech entrepreneurship. He argues that the core principles are identical: you have a product (your music), you need to find a market, and you have to do it with virtually no resources. It’s about creating a compelling story and convincing people to believe in it, whether that’s a three-minute pop song or a complex software solution.

His transition into web development was born from the same creative impulse. He recalls the early days of the internet, a time of Dreamweaver and GeoCities, when building a simple homepage was a monumental effort. “It would take you like 10 hours to write a homepage that looked like crap,” he reminisces. As the tools evolved, so did his career. He founded a web design agency, building hundreds of websites for clients. Yet, amidst this success, a familiar frustration emerged—the same struggle to be understood that plagues many a creative endeavour. The process of gathering feedback from clients was, in his words, “very painful.” This pain point, however, became the seed of his next venture. It was the “aha moment” that led to the creation of Atarim, a platform designed to streamline the chaotic process of client collaboration.

What began as a simple WordPress plugin has since blossomed into a comprehensive SaaS platform, but Peleg’s journey of evolution was far from over. Today, he finds himself at the forefront of another technological revolution, one that he believes is even more significant than the shift from manual coding to drag-and-drop website builders. He’s talking about the rise of AI agents and a seemingly obscure technology called Model Context Protocol, or MCP.

In the podcast, Peleg describes MCPs as nothing less than “the shift between monkeys and humans” for AI. It’s the moment artificial intelligence was given access to tools. For the layperson, he explains it as a common standard, much like HTML was for the early web, that allows AI agents to interact with different applications and perform actions. This, he argues, is the crucial step from simply talking to an AI to allowing it to do things on our behalf. "People haven't even started to think of ideas that will be able to be executed on by this new technology," he insists. "It's the beginning of something massive." He compares the current state of AI to the early days of the internet, a time of immense potential where the most groundbreaking applications were yet to be imagined. The ability for an AI to not just generate text, but to book a flight, manage a calendar, or even deploy code, represents a fundamental paradigm shift.

This new capability directly addresses one of the most persistent challenges in any creative field: the communication gap. Peleg paints a vivid picture of an AI that acts as a universal translator between a non-technical client and a professional developer. The vague, subjective feedback of “make it bigger” can now be instantly translated into the precise, actionable instruction of “bring this up from 21px to 26px.” This is made possible by a recent, and largely unnoticed, breakthrough in AI’s ability to process and understand images at a pixel-perfect level. “None of this was possible literally two months ago,” he marvels, highlighting the dizzying pace of change. This isn’t just about convenience; it’s about eliminating the friction and misunderstanding that can derail creative projects, saving countless hours and fostering a more collaborative environment.

This rapid advancement leads Peleg to a bold and contrarian prediction: the impending decline of standalone design tools like Figma. He argues that the creative industry is witnessing a cyclical evolution. A decade ago, designers created static website mockups in Photoshop, which were then handed off to developers to be built. That entire stage was rendered obsolete when website creation moved directly into the browser with drag-and-drop tools. Peleg believes the exact same transformation is now happening for more complex user interfaces. “The creation is moving into the browser,” he states, “rather than having two stages.” Figma, he suggests, understands this threat, which is why they’ve recently launched their own website-building feature. The future, as he sees it, is a world where the line between design and development blurs, and where AI-powered tools enable a more fluid, integrated workflow.

The conversation is a rich tapestry of such thought-provoking ideas, woven together with concrete examples that bring abstract concepts to life. From the nostalgia of early web design tools to the under-appreciation of custom GPTs as precursors to full-fledged agents, the discussion bridges the past, present, and future of creative work. It connects the dots between seemingly disparate fields, revealing the universal themes of career pivots, problem-solving, and the relentless march of technological evolution. It’s a powerful reminder that in an age increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, the most valuable skills might just be the uniquely human ones: grit, creativity, and the courage to forge an unlikely path.

This article only scratches the surface of a deeply insightful and wide-ranging conversation. To hear more about the specifics of the AI visual breakthrough, the fascinating debate on whether an AI can truly “experience” gravity without a physical body, and Peleg’s surprising take on the rise of AI-generated music, you are strongly encouraged to listen to the full episode of the Project Flux podcast. It’s a discussion that will leave you not with fear of obsolescence, but with a renewed sense of optimism about the incredible potential that lies at the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence.