Angelo Sotira

Angelo Sotira, DeviantArt’s CEO helped pioneer deviantART after the internet’s “boom days” with Scott Jarkoff and Matt Stephens. Scott ensured that deviantART functioned code-wise and community-wise, Matt focused on making sure that the world knew about what promise deviantART offered to aspiring artists, and Angelo covered the legal and some techinical bases, including directing the business concerns of deviantART as a company. Angelo co-founded the company at the bright young age of just 19, but this wasn't his first company. At age 15 he founded a music file sharing site that he late sold off. Of all of the online art communities in the world, DeviantArt.com is one of the largest and least selective. With a system of messageboards, personal pages, and forums which embrace and encourage artists of all types to showcase their work for free, DeviantArt is viewed by some as an artist’s heaven, and by others as the a drag on the artistic experience. One of the main criticisms of DeviantArt is that their lack of a filtering system results in one’s having to sift through the dirt to find gold. While we’re not denying that this may be true, we at Redefine know that sometimes the best talent comes from the most unlikely places.