Where Are They Now: James Hacking, founder of Socially Powerful

Since its launch in 2018, the LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders programme has celebrated hundreds of exceptional individuals. In this series, we reconnect with some of our alumni to discover where their growth journeys have taken them, the impact of being part of the programme, and what their ambitions look like today.

James Hacking knows what it takes to go viral: he had his own freestyle football channel, attracting millions of followers, before starting his influencer marketing agency in 2017. Socially Powerful has trebled in size since Hacking featured in The Top 50 three years ago. “We’re at £40m in revenue now and we’re aiming to get to £100m by 2029,” he says.

Hacking’s ambition is to move into social commerce – helping shoppers buy through social channels – and he plans to grow through acquisitions too. “I’ve never raised money or bought a business before, so it’s going to be interesting.”

What’s the secret to your incredible growth rate?

Many agencies in our space have been bought out by bigger brands. We are independent, which means we’re quicker, slicker and more daring on social media. We recently won Levi’s in the US, following a competitive tender against key industry players. The US has been a catalyst for growth and we have a team of 30 there now.

How do you use technology in your business?

We have an eight-strong technology team building tools for us. If we win business with a shampoo brand aimed at curly hair, we can find influencers with curly hair of a certain age in a specific country with a specific-sized audience – no other tool can do that. We have also launched a product called Seeder, which helps brands seed out products at scale. With us, they can send thousands of products to influencers across the world and we handle the shipping, outreach and response.

What recent challenges have you faced?

We are opening an office in Dubai and I was supposed to move there in March. The Middle Eastern market was growing faster than anywhere else in the world, but we’ll have to see what happens. Brazil is also a hot market for us and we always have an eye on China, waiting to see if it’ll open up to Western companies again.