My name is Tony Haile, that is where I got the name for this site. I’m currently the CEO of Filament, a startup building that thing you always wanted. Previously, I was on the Global Leadership Team at Twitter (RIP), the Founding CEO of Scroll, which Twitter handily acquired, and the Founding CEO of Chartbeat. I’ve been consistently lucky to work with amazing people who covered up my flaws with metronomic regularity.
My career prior to startups was somewhat bizarre. After a Masters degree in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews in which I spent a semester studying at a Palestinian university in the West Bank and narrowly avoided getting blown up (by both sides), I became a bowman on a round-the-world yacht race where I got to experience hurricanes, knockdowns, lightning strikes and being picked up by 90ft waves and thrown against wire rigging several times an hour. This is actually more fun than it sounds.
Searching for quieter pastures I joined Control Risks as the Editor of their Middle East and International Terrorism desk and promptly got embroiled in the response to 9/11 and the war in Iraq. I pulled out, roughly when Bush should have, and in 2004 partnered the awesome Ben Saunders in various polar expeditions. As a result I have been to the North Pole, negotiated with vodka-fuelled helicopter pilots in Siberia, built a runway in Greenland, smuggled explosives through Heathrow and meat into Canada.
I have good dinner party stories, invite me.