For our latest Behind the Brand interview, where we spotlight exceptional founders and brands in the Active portfolio, we spoke to Radha Vyas, Founder of Flash Pack.
Our conversation explored everything from the famous Rio selfie which first put Flash Pack on the map, to the remarkable story of what happened during Covid and getting a second chance to build the adventure travel business.
What was the inspiration behind founding Flash Pack? What sets it apart from other travel companies catering to solo travellers?
Flash Pack is very much rooted in the idea of unique, immersive experiences led by local experts – but we’re also community-led. When we launched originally, back in 2014, there was a huge gap in the market for group travel that catered to adventure-seeking solos in their 30s and 40s. The group market back then was either angled to boozy, 20-something beach breaks or hand-holding holidays for retirees. Either way, the kind of adventure I was looking for – getting under the skin of local culture with standout experiences and the ability to connect with like-minded travellers – simply didn’t exist.
The Flash Pack approach is different because we tap into the heart and soul of a particular destination with locally-led activities that are hard to replicate alone. But even more core to our identity is our global community of friendships. We focus very closely on our small group dynamics – creating a platform via which people of a similar age and life stage can form lasting and transformative friendships in a short period of time.
You’ve been on a remarkable journey since founding the business in 2014 and Covid had a huge impact. Can you share some of the pivotal moments and how the business has evolved since the early days?
Yes, it’s been a rollercoaster to say the least! Our first barrier was finding an audience for our unique take on group travel. My co-founder (now husband) Lee Thompson and I poured our savings into the newly formed Flash Pack and were running it on a shoestring from a bedroom on top of our full-time jobs. We knew our concept was sound, but we struggled to get exposure and bookings. Lee’s viral selfie in Rio de Janeiro changed all that, putting us at the top of Google with millions of website hits in a matter of days, and leading to steady growth from that point in.
In retrospect, we bootstrapped Flash Pack for too long, as well. We were in the process of lining up investors and had widespread interest at the point when Covid hit in 2020. But the fact we hadn’t actually secured funding left us totally exposed as the travel industry collapsed pretty much overnight.
Re-mortgaging our house to buy back our business assets after going into administration in late 2020 was a challenge all of its own; as was the journey to finding backers who understood and shared our vision for Flash Pack 2.0. The fact that Lee and I’s daughter was just a toddler at the time of the pandemic added to the complexity of the situation. Although it also helped us, too, because it put everything into perspective.
Since our comeback post-Covid, our challenge has been to finesse the Flash Pack offering, making our trip portfolio more refined than ever, while working on globally competitive talent initiatives such as our push for pay transparency. Four years later, we’ve rebuilt to a global team of 90 people with £7.8 million in funding earmarked to drive further growth. From setbacks to comebacks, we’ve gone full circle.
What is your vision for Flash Pack as a brand? What do you want people to think and feel when they think of Flash Pack?
Flash Pack is all about tapping into the transformative potential of adventure and friendship. Our customers often tell us they feel revived by our trips, with a fresh perspective or energy for life in general. This is partly due to the immersive nature of our itineraries. When you have the opportunity to snorkel with octopi in the kelp forest South Africa, glamp on a secret island in the Philippines, or take a private catamaran between hidden beaches in Costa Rica, you get to stretch your comfort zone – seeing the world in a fresh light. It’s also the reason why many people take career breaks either as part of, or soon after, our adventures. The experience can really help you shift gears or move from a point of feeling stuck.
The other headline part of our vision is our emphasis on new mid-life friendships. Time and again, the people who travel with us tell us that their highlight of the trip was the group they travelled with. This happens even when they weren’t expecting it to be the case, and were just there for the destination or a curated holiday with all the logistics rolled in.
In a short period of one or two weeks, our solo travellers – located somewhere totally new, with fresh experiences and away from the distractions of daily life – form deep connections. 80% stay in touch after a trip has ended, and many form smaller groups of their own for future adventures. And this capacity to make new friends is life-affirming: people need and welcome it more than they could ever predict.
The incredible viral selfie of your husband and co-founder Lee at the top of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer played a key role in generating awareness of Flash Pack in the early days. Since then, you’ve come up with several out-of-the-box marketing campaigns, like your ‘Will you be my friend?’ experiment and The Friendship Corner. How do you leverage these campaigns to inspire new and existing customers to think of Flash Pack when they want to book a holiday?
We try to come up with original ideas that resonate with our growing global community; including adventure, connection and the importance of being vulnerable and open when it comes to making new friends. We’re not afraid to take risks in leading by example; for instance, with Lee asking strangers to be his friend on the streets of New York (one of the scariest things he’s done, but an effort that led to over 1,000 friend requests). Or our friendship corner, providing a world-first space for strangers to meaningfully connect. The idea of these campaigns is to engage with real-world issues such as the global loneliness epidemic, sparking life-enhancing conversations whereby customers can be reassured that feeling alone is a universal experience – but also, there’s also every opportunity to find “your” people. Ultimately, it’s about helping people to recognise the transformative potential of Flash Pack when it comes to powering new friendships in cities around the globe.
Flash Pack focuses on creating meaningful connections and friendships through travel. Can you tell us more about the creativity behind crafting these experiences and the inspiration that drives your trip-planning process?
Our adventure innovation team is forever on the lookout for new, authentic and off-radar experiences – as the Flash Pack signature that people come back for, time and again. Things like a night river safari in the rainforests of Borneo, canyoning through the river valleys of Jordan or a snowscape forest picnic in the heart of winter Estonia are carefully researched to conjure up a sense of surprise and delight. We’re also constantly tuned into feedback and suggestions from our Flash Pack community, as the very best authority on solo travel, for ideas on destinations, experiences and enhancements to existing trips.
Flash Pack experiences are central to creating friendship, as they act as a bonding mechanism – typically fairly early on in any given trip. Our solo travellers unite in taking on a given challenge or activity together, supporting one another and sharing deep conversations as they go. Our experienced local Pack Leaders are also essential to setting the tone for any given group: they ensure the atmosphere is open and inclusive, and many also end up as lifetime friends with the solo travellers in their charge.
Building a strong team and company culture is crucial in any business. What qualities do you look for in your team members, and how do you approach company culture?
At Flash Pack, we run a faceless application process for all roles that prioritises shared values over titles, and potential over past experience. Initially, we ask a series of carefully designed questions aimed at judging an (anonymous) candidate’s coachability and attitude; the CV bit comes later. This ensures we’re not misled by fancy credentials; and we have more visibility over candidates who may have been overlooked with a more traditional approach. Transparency is also really important to us: we publish a salary calculator to eliminate pay gaps, and share clear performance/ progression frameworks with all team members.
In addition, we run a fully remote, flexible working culture that is truly global. With a team made up of 21% non-English employees, 28% BAME employees and 58% women in leadership roles (including me as one of just 5% of UK female CEOs from an ethnic minority background), we know that our diverse workforce is a huge part of our seismic growth in recent years.
Can you tell us about your fundraising journey and how you decided which investors to partner with?
My co-founder Lee Thompson and I are lucky enough to work with some incredible backers right now: people who really believe in our vision of community-driven travel, and encourage us to take positive risks.
Seeking funding in the aftermath of the pandemic had its challenges, and in the fundraising process, I had plenty of potential investors question how I do things, or was told our business is too niche on our pathway to global expansion. To top it off, female founders only received 2% of all venture capital funding in 2022. But the process taught me to hold out for the people I really want to partner with; and Active Partners, whom we also selected on the basis of their brand experience, has been such an incredible ally as we gear up for further expansion in the US market.
It’s been such an exciting year for Flash Pack. What’s next for the business in 2025 and beyond?
Our tech team has made tremendous progress this year with customer-facing developments within our app and website. Next year, our focus will remain on enhancing this technology, extending its impact beyond just delivering direct services to encompass the broader, more intangible elements of travel, like fostering community.
We’ll also continue to focus growing in our core markets, the US and UK.
What’s your one piece of advice for founders who are in the early stages of building their businesses?
Making sacrifices is part and parcel of life as a founder; but it’s crucial in early stages to pay yourself a decent salary that suits your life circumstances. I’m not recommending an unreasonably huge salary, but a secure founder leads to longer-term thinking – so you need to resist that urge to put yourself last, or survive on the smallest scraps. I learnt this lesson the hard way. When I began Flash Pack 10 years ago, I took a tiny salary and reinvested every penny back into the business.
It was a hard-nosed approach that left me horribly exposed when Covid struck and our revenue plummeted by 90% overnight. We had no savings, no safety net. Everything was tied up in the business, which then went into administration. Eventually we were able to re-buy Flash Pack’s assets on auction and rebuild Flash Pack from scratch. But not all founders will get that second chance. So do yourself a favour and pay yourself fairly from the outset.
We normally end these interviews with your piece of advice, but as the founder of a travel company we’ve got to ask, what’s your favourite country in the world and why?
When I was in my 20s, I lived for a year in Santiago, Chile, and backpacked extensively around the country. It remains one of my favourite destinations on Earth based on the sheer diversity of its physical/cultural landscapes. From cosmopolitan cities to the Andes mountain ranges, the other-worldly Atacama Desert and the edge of the Antarctic, Chile has it all. It’s forever mesmerising even for the most experienced solo travellers out there.
