# Tom Hadfield

> Tom Hadfield is the British entrepreneur and CEO of Mio, an Austin-based company that makes enterprise chat tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack and Google Chat talk to each other. He is the kid who built Soccernet with his dad at 12 and sold it to ESPN for $40 million at 17, attended Harvard, ran a biotech, then went through Y Combinator to attack the problem of messaging interoperability with backing from Khosla Ventures, Cisco and Zoom.

- **Role:** CEO at Mio
- **Organizations:** Mio (m.io), AeroDesigns, Schoolsnet.com, Soccernet.com, Heifer International
- **From:** Wakefield, England
- **Nationality:** British
- **Education:** Undergraduate degree, Harvard University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Soccernet as a pre-teen and sold it to ESPN for $40 million at 17, Co-founded Schoolsnet.com, named 2000 Start-up of the Year by New Media Age, Named a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum (Davos, 2002)

## Career timeline

- **1994** — Co-founds Soccernet with father Greg Hadfield at age 12
- **1999** — Soccernet sold to ESPN for $40 million when Tom is 17
- **2000** — Co-founds Schoolsnet.com; named Start-up of the Year by New Media Age
- **2002** — Named a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum at Davos
- **2006** — Selected as a Goldman Sachs Global Leader
- **2008** — Graduates from Harvard University
- **2009** — Founds biotech firm AeroDesigns, Inc. and becomes CEO
- **2013** — Moves to Silicon Valley
- **2015** — Co-founds Mio (Message.io) with James Cundle; goes through Y Combinator
- **2016** — Relocates the company from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas
- **2018** — Mio raises $5.75M seed funding
- **2021** — Mio raises $8.7M Series A with Cisco and Zoom as investors

## Achievements

- Co-founded Soccernet as a pre-teen and sold it to ESPN for $40 million at 17
- Co-founded Schoolsnet.com, named 2000 Start-up of the Year by New Media Age
- Named a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum (Davos, 2002)
- Selected as a Goldman Sachs Global Leader (2006)
- Graduated from Harvard University (2008)
- Built Mio into the leading enterprise chat interoperability platform, backed by Y Combinator and Khosla Ventures
- Got direct competitors Cisco and Zoom to co-invest in Mio's Series A
- Patron of the UK National Youth Agency and youth advisor to NESTA

## Latest updates

- **2021-12** — Mio raised an $8.7M Series A with strategic investment from Cisco and Zoom to expand messaging interoperability.
- **2024-05** — Mio focused its interoperability platform on Google Workspace and Microsoft Teams environments.

## Links

- Website: https://m.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hadfieldtom/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/tomhadfield

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/tom-hadfield
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-04