Tony Haile

There's no such thing as information overload in Tony Haile's world--so long as that information is nice to look at. Chartbeat, his analytics tool that helps web publishers such as Al Jazeera, Gawker, and The New York Times track traffic and engagement, is dominant because it turns real-time data into a palate of useful, constantly adjusting charts and graphs. That know-how comes out of a culture of visualization: Every surface of Chartbeat's office is writable, and pillars double as chalkboards. But most important is who's on the team. Haile only hires designers who can code as well. That way, he says, "there's no visual being created and then pasted to data. It happens together."