Tom Hale joined Linden Lab as Chief Product Officer in September 2008, bringing over 15 years of experience in product development, marketing and management. Having most recently served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Knowledge Worker Business Unit at Adobe Systems, Hale now drives the product strategy for Second Life to support and further develop the inworld economy which is projected at more than US$450 million in user-to-user transaction in 2009.
Prior to Linden Lab, Hale was an Entrepreneur-In-Residence (EIR) at Redpoint Ventures, investigating the intersections of gaming, virtual goods and virtual worlds, online communications, community and social networking. At Adobe, Hale led the collaboration and Software as a Service (SaaS) agendas, driving the strategy for businesses such as Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Connect (formerly known as Macromedia Breeze), and the Flash Media Server after the acquisition of Macromedia. At Macromedia, Hale was instrumental in making Macromedia products standard for web development, establishing the Flash Player as a platform for rich internet applications (RIAs), and building a $100 million a year business in the learning and training space.
