Overview

Linkfluence was a global leader in social listening, with strong technology, a recognized brand, and marquee CPG clients across Europe and the United States.

But the category itself no longer scaled.

Despite widespread adoption, social listening remained peripheral inside large organizations. Budgets sat with community teams, impact was limited, and senior brand leaders — the executives who control strategic budgets — were not engaged.

The company had traction, but the category no longer scaled.

A larger market ready for disruption

At the same time, Linkfluence had developed a major technological breakthrough.

Its R&D team had built an AI layer capable of transforming continuous social data into market-research-grade insight: brand attributes, preferences, attitudes, and behaviors at a granular level.

This opened a far larger opportunity.

Traditional market research is a €50B global industry, still heavily reliant on surveys, panels, and episodic studies — methods that are expensive, slow, and structurally unscalable. Linkfluence’s technology offered a continuous, AI-driven alternative.

The strategic pivot was clear: move from social listening into market research.

What was missing was the GTM engine to make that pivot legible, credible, and commercially executable.

Building the GTM foundation for the pivot

A fund Operating Partner brought Tyos into the engagement to help operationalize the transition.

Tyos worked with leadership to rebuild the GTM foundation required to exit the old category and credibly enter the new one:

• mapped buyer psychology and jobs-to-be-done across global CPG teams
• segmented the market to identify early adopters ready for AI-driven insight
• authored the positioning shift from social listening to Continuous Consumer Insight
• clarified differentiation versus legacy research firms and AI-native competitors
• produced a global GTM playbook, sales narratives, and persona-based value stories
• aligned sales teams across Europe and the U.S. around a unified, AI-first narrative

For the first time, the company spoke one commercial language — anchored in strategic insight, not tactical monitoring.

Outcome

Senior brand leaders immediately recognized the strategic value. Positioning became coherent across regions, and commercial momentum followed.

Linkfluence was acquired by Meltwater for €50M, recognized as the company that had successfully escaped a saturated category and entered a far larger, strategic one.