In competitive sailing, there is a skill sailors call “reading the wind.” It is the ability to detect subtle shifts in conditions before they fully emerge. A slight movement in the water, a change in pressure across the sails, a pattern forming on the horizon — these signals allow elite sailors to anticipate what others only notice once it is too late.

For Andrea Tortella, former Captain of the Monaco National Sailing Team, this principle became far more than an athletic skill. It evolved into a philosophy — one that now shapes how he approaches leadership, innovation, and the future of the digital economy.

Today, Tortella has exchanged the waters of the Mediterranean for one of the most complex arenas in modern technology: the global advertising ecosystem. As CEO and Co-Founder of Thrad, he leads a company delivering millions of advertisements daily to Fortune 500 brands, while attempting something the industry has struggled with for over a decade — creating advertising that is intelligent, privacy-conscious, and genuinely valuable for users.

Working alongside co-founder Marco Visentin, an artificial intelligence researcher who left his PhD at Imperial College London to pursue this vision, Tortella is helping redefine how the internet itself is monetized.

Their mission is ambitious: build the infrastructure that powers the next generation of the open web.