Itzik Levy and the business of getting your day back

An appointment looks like a small thing to build a company around. A name, a time, a square on a calendar. Then the client needs a reminder. The work needs an invoice. The invoice needs paying. The person who wanted to teach, consult or repair something discovers that running a business comes with an additional occupation: keeping the business running.

Itzik Levy has spent much of his career following that chain. In 2010, he co-founded vcita, which began with online scheduling and grew into software for managing the work around the appointment. A calendar was the entrance. Behind it lay the whole crowded day.

He arrived with experience at the other end of the software market. His previous company, Kidaro, had been acquired by Microsoft. He could build for large organizations. At vcita, the challenge became making technology useful to people whose businesses had very little room for technological housekeeping.

A calendar after Microsoft

Levy began his working life in software development in the Israeli military and earned a computer science degree from Tel Aviv University. Before vcita, he co-founded Kidaro and led its research and development. Kidaro worked on desktop virtualization, a field concerned with giving organizations more control over computing environments without tying everything to a particular machine.

In March 2008, Microsoft announced its intended acquisition of Kidaro. The plan was to incorporate its technology into the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack. The problems were distinctly corporate: deploying virtual PCs, handling application compatibility and making desktop management less cumbersome for IT professionals.

Levy became a Product Unit Manager at Microsoft after the acquisition. It was an education in building software inside a company whose customers often had departments devoted to operating it.

By 2019, explaining his next venture, he described wanting work that brought him closer to people. The small businesses he had in mind could be individual professionals. Enterprise vendors’ definitions of a small company often began at a headcount well above those customers. There was room beneath the usual sales categories, and people working there.

The appointment acquired neighbours

Levy and Eran Outmazgin founded vcita in 2010. Scheduling gave it a specific place to begin. The company’s own chronology puts multilingual expansion in 2012, broader business management in 2013 and a mobile app in 2015. Email and SMS marketing followed in 2017.

The expansion came through listening to customers. An owner using a booking tool still needed to keep client information and collect money. Each additional task exposed another connection the software could make.

In a 2023 conversation about small-business software, Levy argued for bringing those functions together. Buying separate tools leaves the owner responsible for making them cooperate. Integration becomes one more job, performed by someone who may have bought software specifically to escape extra jobs.

The progression is easy to describe after the fact. Building it requires deciding how many neighbouring problems to take on. A calendar can remain simple because its boundaries are clear. A business management platform has to contain more of the owner’s day without becoming another thing that needs managing.

No coffee-machine strategy

Levy’s recollection of vcita’s early premises dispenses with the glamorous startup photograph. The office building was deteriorating. Downstairs was a cheap cafeteria. Money went toward the people and the technology before it went toward attractive surroundings.

“We did a lot with a little,” he recalled.

Previous experience had helped, but he said the team still underestimated the difficulty of serving the variety of small businesses. The challenge was hidden inside the category. Businesses can share a size and operate in quite different ways.

By July 2019, vcita had announced a $15 million investment round led by Forestay Capital. Levy described plans to spend on technology, marketing and strategic partnerships. The company then had 90 employees. The new capital created more room to pursue the work; it did not remove the question of where to concentrate.

In 2024, vcita won the SaaS Award for Best SaaS Product for Small Business / SMEs. Discussing development, Levy emphasized quick iterations and daily feedback. The task remained making many functions feel straightforward. That is an awkward assignment for an engineer: every additional capability creates another opportunity to complicate someone’s afternoon.

The company behind the familiar name

Alongside its direct relationship with business owners, vcita built a route through organizations that already served them. Its inTandem offering allows partners to bring business software to their customers under their own brands.

A partnership with Vodafone Business made that approach concrete. The business management tool launched initially in Italy, bringing together booking, client records, invoicing, payment tracking and marketing. A telecom company could offer more of the infrastructure of a working day. vcita supplied the software underneath.

Mastercard provided another route. Levy’s connection with the company included its Start Path program. vcita subsequently became a technology partner for Mastercard Biz360, announced in 2024. The relationship placed vcita’s business management capabilities inside a wider offering for small businesses.

Levy describes partnership as requiring attention to the other organization’s goals, timetable and measures of success. A supplier can concentrate on a sale. A partner has an ongoing interest in what the buyer achieves afterward. For a founder, this stretches the job beyond product development into understanding how another business operates.

In March 2025, Levy said vcita served about 150,000 small and medium enterprises worldwide. The number describes the reach of that work at the time. At the other end of every distribution agreement, there was still an owner deciding whether to use the tool tomorrow.

The customer keeps the last word

“People digitize because they want more order,” Levy observed.

His example was the difficulty of connecting marketing activity with payments when the information lives in separate systems. The records exist, but the owner cannot easily follow the relationship between an email campaign and the money it produces. Putting the work together creates a more useful view.

AI brings a further decision: how much of that work should the software perform? Levy’s published argument favors automation that grows with the owner’s confidence. A system can prepare a response, an estimate or an appointment action, then ask for approval.

“People digitize because they want more order.”

Itzik Levy

There is a personal relationship behind many small businesses. An estimate carries the owner’s judgment. A reply carries the owner’s voice. Handing those tasks to software involves entrusting it with something customers associate with a person.

Levy argues that AI should enter existing routines, adapt to the business and reduce interruptions. Requiring owners to learn a separate way of working defeats some of the purpose. The software has to earn additional responsibility through use. Approval is a practical point at which the owner can inspect its work and decide whether to rely on it again.

A useful tool still needs a sensible bill

In July 2025, Levy turned to the commercial side of the same problem: paying for AI in small-business software. The feature may save time, but the customer must understand both the saving and the charge.

He examined bundling AI into existing subscriptions, charging for premium capabilities and billing according to use. Each approach changes the bargain. Usage pricing may offer a low starting cost, while making the eventual bill harder to predict. A premium add-on must offer enough visible value to persuade someone to buy it.

His position places outcomes at the center of the decision. Product guides, beta testing and customer interviews can help establish what owners value. A sophisticated feature does not automatically make an additional expense welcome.

The question is especially apt for software promising to remove administrative work. Monitoring another unpredictable bill can itself become administrative work. The convenience needs to survive the invoice.

Three emails, then a conversation

Levy applies a similar preference for completion to his own working habits. “I don’t believe in over-multitasking,” he said in 2021. When an email exchange exceeds three messages, he recommends a meeting to reach a decision. The fourth email may have to find another hobby.

His interests extend to popular science and geopolitics, particularly where technology, economics and human affairs meet. Mathematics, physics and logic have long appealed to him. He has also spoken of choosing to live in Israel despite having other options.

There is a less technical detail: he likes mojitos. He once bought his son a bar kit and a cocktail recipe book, and his son made him a different drink each day. Even a software founder can appreciate a useful experiment arriving in a glass.

Back to the unanswered enquiry

In May 2026, inTandem by vcita announced AI Leads Max for marketing and advertising organizations. It combined voice and chat receptionists, lead scoring and follow-ups. The aim was to help partners connect incoming interest with business results.

It brings Levy back to the moment before the calendar entry: somebody wants something, and the business needs to respond. The product has expanded around the appointment in both directions.

His stated ambition in 2024 was for millions of businesses to use vcita to run their operations. That ambition remains larger than the dated customer counts he has discussed publicly. Reaching it means persuading many individual owners that the software deserves a place in their day.

A business owner may never care about desktop virtualization, distribution strategy or the architecture behind an AI assistant. There is work waiting. For Levy, that leaves a demanding measure of usefulness: whether the owner gets to more of it.