LDC Top 50 2025
Omar Hamdi
Founder and CEO
Pathos Communications
Former BBC presenter Omar Hamdi is on a mission to democratise media access for the world’s small-to-medium-sized businesses. His media-technology company, Pathos Communications, uses AI to deliver premium press coverage at a fraction of traditional public relations (PR) costs.
Founded in 2019, the agency now serves over 5,000 clients across 55 countries, with the potential to generate £100 million in turnover within a decade. Hamdi says most of his 60-strong team came from industries unrelated to the media or technology, “I don’t care where they’ve been, only where they’re going. The question is, do they share my ambition to make Pathos THE global SME PR engine?”
I want to live in a world where it’s as easy to access the media as it is to have a LinkedIn profile.”
Q&A
What’s unique about Pathos?
We’ve built two proprietary tools: our AI agent, PathosMind, and Pressella, a virtual publicist. PathosMind allows our staff to manage a client call with just a few minutes’ prep, armed with draft articles, news hooks, a social media deep dive, and ideas for future stories. It gives our staff a huge competitive advantage. Pressella joins all client meetings and, with permission, reviews email history, and any time she hears something newsworthy, she puts her hand up and says: “I’ve written an article, would you like me to pitch that for you?”
How ambitious are you?
I’m restless by nature. I rarely sleep more than three hours a night. I’m bullish on the media. So many businesses are thinking about PR because they need to be mentioned in trusted sources to become visible in large language model (LLM) results, such as ChatGPT. I want our Pressella technology to be utilised by SMEs worldwide. We have no real competitors so it’s up to us to capture market demand, in a similar way in which Uber disrupted the traditional taxi market. A turnover of £100 million in 10 years is doable – but we could do it in less. I want to live in a world where it’s as easy to access the media as it is to have a LinkedIn profile.
What have you sacrificed to build this business?
The pain of being an entrepreneur is indescribable. There have been times when it’s made me physically sick. But I can’t imagine having a normal job; I had to do this, whatever the cost. It’s like playing 50 simultaneous games of chess every day and you have to win every game, or you lose them all. But it feels so good to win!
