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Strike Digital founders on their journey from childhood friends to award-winning agency leaders
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With their new website now live, we chat with Richie and David, founders of Strike Digital, about globally scaling e-commerce brands and their mission to deliver expert-led, profit-driven digital marketing campaigns.
When childhood friends Richie McSweeney and David de Patoul first teamed up at Meta, they quickly realised how much potential there was for e-commerce brands to scale profitably with the right advertising strategy. In 2020, they turned that insight into Strike Digital, a Dublin-based agency built from a team of ex-Meta and ex-Google account managers who bring proven platform expertise to every campaign.
Since then, Strike Digital has grown into one of Europe’s leading e-commerce marketing agencies, employing 20+ full-time specialists focused on driving real growth for direct-to-consumer brands. Their client roster spans household names like Louis Copeland, SOSU Cosmetics and Art & Hobby, as well as international e-commerce leaders, including Lisa Eldridge Beauty and The GelBottle. By combining paid social, search, email and SMS strategies with an unwavering focus on profitability and ROAS (return on advertising spend), Strike Digital helps brands not just reach audiences, but convert them into loyal customers.
With a new website just launched and a mission to become a true 360° e-commerce agency, we caught up with Richie and David to hear about their journey, the growth of Strike Digital and their vision for the future of e-commerce marketing.
Tell us about your background.
David: We’ve been childhood friends since the age of three, growing up together in Dún Laoghaire and attending the same school. In 2019, Richie completed his MSc in Digital Marketing Strategy at Trinity College Dublin and began working as an Account Manager at Meta. Around the same time, I earned my degree in Marketing in Belgium and worked with start-up accelerators in LATAM. Then, I joined Richie at Meta. We quickly developed a shared passion for helping e-commerce businesses grow through paid advertising, laying the foundations for what would later become Strike Digital.
What made you decide to leave Meta and take the plunge to start your own business?
Richie: We’ve both had an entrepreneurial streak since we were young – even in school, we worked on a few small projects together. Trust was built, lessons were learned, but they gave us a taste of the entrepreneurial life and the belief that, with the right idea, we could build something special.
The inspiration to do just that came at Meta, where we were working closely with agencies every day and quickly saw a gap in the market. Many of those agencies lacked the platform knowledge or experience to structure and scale their clients’ accounts properly. We saw countless business owners frustrated with the quality of service they were getting, often because agencies didn’t have the depth of expertise needed.
Seeing the impact we were having directly with brands not working with agencies, we realised there was space for a new type of agency – one that could lead the way in service quality, powered by genuine experts across all the channels an e-commerce business needs to scale. That’s when Strike Digital was born and took off.
Give us a rundown of the services provided by Strike Digital.
David: We provide end-to-end digital growth solutions for e-commerce brands. Our core services include Social Media Advertising, Search Engine Marketing, Retention Marketing (Email & SMS), and Creative Consultancy. We’re also gearing up to launch two exciting new services by the end of this year: AI-optimised SEO and a full creative department for in-house management of images and videos for e-commerce. These will bring us closer to our long-term vision of becoming a true 360° e-commerce agency.
What’s a day in the life of a business co-founder like?
Richie: No two days are ever the same – and that’s what makes it so exciting.
Over the years, we’ve become comfortable wearing 27 different hats in a single day. Whether it’s problem-solving alongside the team for a client, strategising for a new account, reviewing results, or celebrating wins, it’s always changing. Most importantly, it’s been about creating scalable structures that stay strong as we grow beyond a team of 20.
The positive energy we get from seeing our clients celebrate growth is what we thrive on. There’s no better feeling than putting everything into a new strategy structure and seeing the client smash their targets with our team firing on all cylinders.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
Richie: For me, it has to be during our recent company trip to Dubai in May 2025. As a fully remote company, we always look forward to our in-person events to spend time with our team who are spread across the world. Since 2023, we’ve incorporated full-team annual trips as part of our culture to plan out the future together and work on our exciting upcoming plans.
This year, we flew everyone out to Dubai for a week and presented our long-term vision for Strike Digital, all while looking out at the Burj Khalifa – a surreal moment. We celebrated some of the recent big wins we’ve had with clients who have been working alongside some incredible personalities and brands – a cosmetics partnership with Dua Lipa, a global fashion collaboration with Nike, a clothing partnership with Tom Brady – this is part of what gets us excited about the work we do. Then we capped it off that weekend with some unforgettable experiences: jet skiing, desert sandboarding, camel riding, and a boat cruise.
Being able to reward the team in that way, and celebrating those client wins with them, has been my proudest highlight to date. I’m not sure how we’ll top it in 2026 – but ask me again next year!
David: Winning multiple “Agency of the Year” awards in 2024 was the highlight of my career so far. When you’re working on consistent improvements on a day-to-day basis, there is always a focus on “What’s wrong? What can we do better? Where are we going next?”. There aren’t many moments where you get to zoom out and actually appreciate how far the agency has come.
Celebrating the agency award alongside Richie, Ciarán Walsh, our incredible COO, and the rest of our team of experts meant more than I had imagined. It was a true motivator to push onwards. It’s in those moments, looking back at all the client growth and successes that got us there, that we get inspired to continue our efforts as a team. Our ambition is to remain the best e-commerce specialised agency in the country and keep redefining the definition of that term.
How do you stay reactive and up to date in an industry that is constantly evolving?
David: Our partnerships have been crucial. We work closely with reps from all the big platforms we use, such as Meta and Google, and also our partners like Varos (benchmarking), TripleWhale (attribution), and MagicBrief (creative analysis). These reps keep us ahead of the curve with updates and insights.
On top of that, we have industry-specific internal meetings where our team discusses the impact of new features, platform changes, and industry trends for our clients. It’s how we constantly learn, adapt, and stay ahead.
Our attitude to change and updates is one of excitement. Change always presents an opportunity for us to increase our competitive advantage versus slower-moving agencies by adapting and implementing better ways of growing our clients’ accounts.
What’s it like being in business with your childhood friend?
Richie: It’s a question we get asked a lot. The truth is, it’s about balance. We each handle different areas of the business, and we hold each other accountable – but the foundation of trust makes it the fantastic partnership that it is.
At the same time, we don’t lose sight of the friendship. We still do all the normal things friends do — dinners, playing football, holidays. More recently, Richie even gave a riveting best man speech at David’s wedding in June that would give Jimmy Carr a run for his money!
Of course, there are challenges, but we’ve always overcome them through open communication and honesty. Running a business with someone you’ve known your whole life is a privilege neither of us takes for granted.
You’re five years in business this year. What do the next five years look like for Strike Digital?
David: We’ve got huge plans in the pipeline. We’ve doubled our revenue figures consistently for the past three years, and we’re not slowing down. We’ve reached a team size of 20, and in the last few days, we’ve launched a brand-new website that better reflects our service offering. We’re pushing on for more client wins, more talent on the team, and an even more strategic approach to our work, leveraging AI without losing that expert human touch.
Within the next five years, we are fully committed to becoming a world leader in e-commerce performance marketing, investing in brands we believe in, technology we use and setting the industry standard for what a successful brand-agency partnership should be.
Five years into our journey, we’re still just getting started.
Strike Digital is one of Europe’s leading e-commerce marketing agencies. Request your free strategy session at www.strikedigital.ie/contact.
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