Why We Built Packpals (And Why It Took a Balkan Road Trip to Get There)
Some of the best products start with a problem you can't stop thinking about. Ours started with a group chat that wouldn't stop.
Packpals Team · 2026-05-28 · 6 min
Some of the best products start with a problem you can't stop thinking about. Ours started with a group chat that wouldn't stop.
For two years, we talked about doing a Balkan road trip. Split to Dubrovnik, maybe a week through Bosnia, ending somewhere on the Albanian coast. The kind of trip that sounds better every time you describe it to someone who wasn't there. The kind of trip that's genuinely easy to imagine and, as it turns out, genuinely hard to actually plan.
Once we tried to get started, the group chat became something else entirely. Hundreds of messages about dates that worked for some people and not others. Spreadsheet links that half the group never opened. Hotels saved to someone's browser tab, shared once, never seen again. Route suggestions that got buried under weekend small talk. A poll about which week to go that still had three votes missing two months later.
We weren't bad at planning. We were just using the wrong tools, or rather, no tools at all. Just a group chat and good intentions.
The moment we realised something was broken
The real problem wasn't that people didn't want to plan. It was that planning with a group is genuinely hard in ways that no single tool was designed to solve.
Links get lost. That perfect guesthouse someone found at midnight? Buried in the chat by morning. The restaurant a friend spotted on Instagram? Never made it to the actual plan. The accommodation everyone agreed on in principle? Nobody could remember which one it was.
Decisions stall. A poll in a group chat gets ignored. A question like beach day or city day? turns into a week of non-committal replies and one person eventually just deciding for everyone. The person who "doesn't mind either way" suddenly has very strong opinions the moment something gets booked.
There's no single source of truth. One person has the flight details. Another has the accommodation confirmation. The itinerary lives in someone's notes app. The packing list was started in a Google Doc that three people have editing access to and nobody has opened since April.
We kept thinking: this is too hard for something that's supposed to be exciting.
So we built Packpals
Packpals is a shared planning space that makes travelling together simple and, honestly, fun again. One place where your whole group can start a trip, bring everyone in, and actually plan together from the first idea to the last bag being packed.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
Shared wishlists — Save spots from Instagram, TikTok, Google Maps, or anywhere else into one list the whole group can see and add to. No more, what was that place someone mentioned? The good ideas stay found.
Polls — Create a poll, everyone votes, decision made. Beach versus mountains, hotel versus villa, Tuesday versus Thursday. Democracy in under a minute, without the group chat chaos.
Collaborative itineraries — Build a day-by-day plan together. Everyone can see it, contribute to it, and actually show up knowing what's happening. Structure without the stress of one person carrying all the admin.
Packing lists — Shared lists so the group packs smart, not duplicated. One tent, not four. One first aid kit, not none.
File sharing — Confirmations, booking references, maps, travel documents. All in one place, accessible to everyone, findable in ten seconds rather than twenty minutes of scrolling.
Why we kept building
We started by solving our own travel headaches. But the more we talked to other people about group trips — friends, colleagues, people on the internet who clearly felt the same frustration — the more we realised the problem was universal.
Everyone has a version of the story. The birthday trip that almost didn't happen. The WhatsApp thread that reached 300 messages before a single hotel was booked. The one friend who agreed to every plan verbally and then disappeared when it was time to confirm. The spreadsheet that was supposed to fix everything and just added another thing to maintain.
If you're in the middle of that right now, our guide to planning a group trip without the drama covers the practical steps — polls, wishlists, and keeping everyone on the same page.
We kept building because we believe adventures should start with excitement, not coordination stress. The Balkan road trip, for what it's worth, eventually happened. And it was everything we'd talked about for two years.
We built Packpals so yours can too.
Packpals is free. No credit card required. Create a trip, invite your group, and start planning the way it was always supposed to feel.