When Preeti Suri reached the summit of Mount Rainier, she wasn’t just celebrating a mountaineering milestone; she was completing a transformation from burned out investment banker to founder on a mission.

Suri is co-founder and CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based AdventureTripr, a travel marketplace leveraging technology and AI to help facilitate multi-day outdoor excursions.

Launched just one month before the 2020 pandemic lockdown, the company has scaled today to a profitable platform offering 500 trips across 50 countries, fueled by a lean team and a “tech-first” approach to travel curation.

AdventureTripr has found success in dismantling the economic and social-cultural barriers that often keep people of color and first-time hikers away from the world’s most iconic trails and peaks.

The discovery enjoyed by customers started with Puri’s own realization about the benefits of the outdoors, which was paved by her exhaustion with the corporate grind. A former CPA and investment banker in London, Suri found herself at a breaking point.

“I was like, ‘This is not what I want to do the rest of my life. I’m just making rich people richer. It’s not fulfilling,'” Suri said.

Moving to Seattle as a new mom brought a different challenge: postpartum depression and a loss of physical stamina. She began hiking Washington’s trails as a form of therapy, carrying her baby on her back. As her son grew, so did her ambition. She eventually climbed every major Washington volcano, a journey she describes as “absolutely transformational” for her mental health.

She thought to herself: “I want to enable that for others.”

‘It doesn’t feel like work anymore’

With multi-day adventure trips from major U.S. operators such as Backroads and REI priced as high as $7,000 per person, Suri recognized a gap in the market. And she knew costs could be lowered by working directly with local guides.

She also understood that many South Asian travelers felt a sense of “intimidation and hesitation” because they hadn’t grown up in a hiking culture.

“A lot of the U.S. companies assumed a lot of the people of color either didn’t know how to do this stuff or didn’t want to do this stuff, whereas my insight was it was a lot of aspiration,” Suri said. “They need a bit more hand-holding.”

While the company’s clientele has balanced out over time, roughly 40% of its business still comes from a high-net-worth South Asian demographic — a “sweet spot” of customers who value the personalized training plans and gear guidance AdventureTripr provides.

Alongside co-founder Marat Khabibullin, a longtime software engineer at Microsoft, Suri integrated AI into AdventureTripr’s workflow long before it became a mainstream buzzword, scaling more rapidly than legacy adventure companies.

“It takes us 15 minutes to upload a new trip because we have AI tools built for that and to create our content,” Suri said.

The company is also currently developing AI agents to handle tasks such as answering traveler questions about gear or local tipping customs. But Suri remains skeptical of the “AI travel planner” trend that is popular among many startups.

“People who like to piece things together will continue piecing things together,” she said. “Curation and customization is where the expert knowledge comes into play. … There is so much significance to the human element of human connection.”

AdventureTripr employs about 20 full-time and freelance employees. The company, which generates revenue from bookings, raised approximately $500,000 in pre-seed funding in 2021 from advisors and clients.

Looking back at her banking days, Suri says she works just as hard now but without the looming threat of burnout. Fulfillment comes from seeing clients — ranging from cancer survivors to groups of 40 Indian moms — conquer treks like Machu Picchu or the Tour du Mont Blanc.

“It doesn’t feel like work anymore,” Suri said. “It is changing lifestyles, changing people’s lives. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”