Data entrepreneur cashes in on business insights
Tom Smith saw a gap in the market when the financial crisis hit in 2008. Companies were still buying data to understand their customers, but the information was outdated—built for TV, radio, and print, not for the digital age.
Smith, then working in advertising, noticed the disconnect. Brands wanted to know how to reach audiences online, across borders and social platforms. The existing data sets couldn’t answer those questions. So he decided to build his own.
From crisis to opportunity
Two weeks after leaving his job as head of consumer futures at Universal McCann, the market collapsed. Investors were wary of anything new. Smith spent 11 months pitching his idea—GlobalWebIndex, now known as GWI—to more than 100 potential clients. He had no product, just a promise.
“When you don’t have a physical product to sell yet, you’ve got to sell the potential of what’s to come,” he said. Early adopters got perks: exclusive access to parts of the dataset, flexible pricing. It worked. Microsoft became his first customer, signing on for a global perspective on its products.
That deal changed everything. GWI now counts Google, Spotify, The Guardian, and X among its clients. This year, the company is expected to surpass £100 million in revenue.
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The grind behind the growth
Smith’s persistence wasn’t just about luck. He knew the problem intimately. Traditional market research was slow and expensive. GWI offered something faster and cheaper: a platform with detailed, real-time data on consumer behavior worldwide.
Smith was undeterred by rejection. He had to learn the hard way—how to read between the lines, how to spot genuine interest in a sea of no’s. He talked to 10 people at Microsoft before finding the right one. There were no shortcuts.
What kept him going? Belief in the solution. “I knew the problem and I knew the solution was needed,” he said. Small wins—like that first Microsoft deal—became fuel. The rest was just persistence.
GWI’s rise isn’t just a story of timing. It’s a reminder that even the best ideas need someone willing to push through the noise. The data was always there. Smith just had to convince the world it was worth paying for.
