# Shahar Erez

> Shahar Erez is an Israeli enterprise software entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of Arato. He previously co-founded and led Stoke Talent, the freelance management platform acquired by Fiverr for an announced $95 million in 2021 and relaunched as Fiverr Enterprise in 2023. His career spans engineering, product and marketing roles at Mercury Interactive, HP, VMware and Kenshoo, alongside public writing and talks about freelance work and AI reliability.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Arato
- **Organizations:** Arato, Stoke Talent, Fiverr Enterprise, TheOrg, Kenshoo, VMware, HP Software, Mercury Interactive, RSA Security, P-Cube, AppsFlyer, Guesty
- **Nationality:** Israeli
- **Education:** BA in computer science and entrepreneurship, IDC Herzliya (now Reichman University), MBA, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
- **Known for:** Co-founded Stoke Talent, acquired by Fiverr for an announced $95 million in 2021., Led Stoke Talent as it raised $20 million in total funding by June 2021., Led the transition of Stoke Talent to Fiverr Enterprise in 2023.

## Career timeline

- **2001-2002** — Worked as a software developer at P-Cube.
- **2004-2007** — Held QA management and product architecture roles at Mercury Interactive.
- **2007-2008** — Served as a senior product manager at RSA Security.
- **2008-2010** — Held product management leadership roles at HP Software.
- **2010-2014** — Held director and senior director roles at VMware in cloud onboarding and IT business management products.
- **2013-2014** — Co-founded and led TheOrg; listed dates overlap with VMware roles.
- **2015-2018** — Held product leadership roles at Kenshoo, subsequently becoming CMO.
- **2018-2019** — Advised AppsFlyer and Guesty on strategy.
- **2019** — Co-founded Stoke Talent with Hilik Paz; announced a $4.5 million seed round.
- **2021** — Stoke announced $15.5 million Series A funding in June; Fiverr announced its acquisition for $95 million in November.
- **2023** — Led Stoke’s transition to Fiverr Enterprise; appeared in TED’s The Way We Work series in October.
- **2024** — Co-founded Arato with Hilik Paz and Tal Salmona, becoming CEO.
- **2026** — Arato announced a $10 million seed round led by TLV Partners in June.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Stoke Talent, acquired by Fiverr for an announced $95 million in 2021.
- Led Stoke Talent as it raised $20 million in total funding by June 2021.
- Led the transition of Stoke Talent to Fiverr Enterprise in 2023.
- Delivered the 2023 TED video How to build a freelance career that works for you.
- Co-founded Arato, which announced $10 million in seed financing in June 2026.

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Arato announced a $10 million seed round led by TLV Partners, with participation from Jibe Ventures, Raghu Raghuram and Marianna Tessel; the company reported 23 employees in Israel.
- **2025-04** — Published Programming an LLM, advocating software engineering discipline and a separate development lifecycle for LLM application logic.

## Links

- Website: https://arato.ai/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaharer/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/shaharer

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/shahar-erez
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-26