By Jack Shillito

After six and a half years at the helm of Jungle Creations, its founder and CEO, Jamie Bolding, has announced he’s stepping down from the digital media company. 

If you’re sat/stood/slouched there thinking this Jamie fella must therefore be in his sixties or something, think again. He founded Jungle in 2014 at just 23 and is, alas, not quite 30. Urh.

Having graduated with a Business Management degree from the University of Manchester in 2013, Jamie went to work on founding Jungle Creations which was up and running by July 2014.

Bolding started off with the social video brand, Viral Thread (since renamed VT and now with nearly 27 million followers), at his mum’s house. 

He initially focussed on collating content that was already being shared across social media but soon started writing original, relatable content aimed at university students. The first piece he produced was a listicle entitled ‘Twenty people you will meet at fresher's week,’ and from that point there was no looking back. 

Just over 6 months later, in February 2015, Viral Thread’s Facebook page had reached 1 million likes.

In 2016, Viral Thread posted a video featuring an airbag bicycle helmet that inflates when you crash, invented by Hövding, a Swedish company. It became VT’s most-watched video with over 150 million views.

Remember that?

Living up to its name, Viral Thread had indeed helped make Hövding’s product go viral - and worked wonders for the Swedish company as a result. “Their sales quadrupled, they went out of stock and the share price doubled in a week,” Bolding told The Independent. Crikey.

By 2017, the company's content was getting up to 4 billion views a month, making it one of the most-viewed media properties in the world. Meanwhile, it was turning over a tidy, though arguably undervalued given its reach and influence, £8million.

Off the back of this run of success, in 2018 the company raised £3million in series A funding from Edge Investments and their venture partner, former BBC Worldwide Chief Executive, John Smith.

Jungle Creations has since become a highly successful media, marketing and commerce business that owns and operates seven core media brands, including its flagship channel VT (human-interest stories), as well as Twisted (food), Craft Factory (arts & crafts), Four Nine (female focussed), Level Fitness (you guessed it, fitness), Lovimals (animals, pets and so on. It also has a successful e-commerce arm), and Blue Crate (an eclectic gifting website).

The social-first publisher has also 

• built an online community of over 120 million followers

• created campaigns for brands including Baileys, Greenpeace, Sky and Virgin

• generated more Facebook video views for brands than any other UK publisher

• grown the company to over 140 employees across offices in London and New York

• built itself a full-service, social-first creative agency called The Wild that provides creative solutions, events, social media management, production, and marketing

Adding cherries on top of this impressive cake, Bolding was featured as the top Media and Marketing honouree in the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe in 2018, followed by TechRound’s 29 Under 29 in 2020.

2020 wasn’t so kind to rival social publishers JOE Media and The Hook, both of which were forced to find new buyers. But, as Jungle’s chief content and brand officer Melissa Chapman told The Drum, 2020 has “proven the resilience of social publishing. [...] With the right company structure and strategies in place, social publishers are the ones with the agility to move with the conversation as it happens.”

Indeed, 2020 saw a year of record revenue growth of 38% to £19.5m for Jungle. Running in parallel to the revenue growth, Jungle launched on TikTok and increased its reach on Snapchat where it grew its number of Discover shows sevenfold. Overall, it saw a huge uptick in viewers and followers over the year and on some platforms as much as a 30% increase.

Despite building what has become a digital media empire, Bolding pleasingly hasn’t turned into an egotistical maniac.

In a 2019 TEDx talk, Bolding humbly declared that he was “fundamentally flawed as a human being.” In emphasising this, he continued, “I’ve been single for 10 years, I live alone with my cat, and I often say or do the completely wrong thing.” (Though I’m here to happily tell you that since that talk, Bolding went on to find the love of his life and became engaged in late 2020)

As he approaches his 30th birthday, Bolding told The Drum “There are more things I want to do and to achieve, while at the same time ensuring Jungle is led by people just as passionate about the business as I am.”

From 1 February, Bolding will move into a director role, with Melissa Chapman (who was one of Bolding’s first hires, joining a team of just three back in 2014) and chief operating officer Nat Poulter stepping up as joint CEOs.

They certainly have some plans afoot. For 2021, Jungle is making steps into the world of podcasting, developing high quality, cross-platform original programming, and building relationships beyond social with their audiences.

In a LinkedIn post announcing his departure as CEO, Bolding said, ‘As a founder, stepping down as CEO is an incredibly tough thing. But when you have people stepping up who are so passionate, so knowledgeable, and so effective every single day it was way easier than I ever could have imagined.’

We look forward to seeing what Bolding does next.