Upgrade Pack, the fintech-based loyalty platform, that provides users with exclusive, always discounted flight and hotel upgrades, has today announced that it is giving share options to every employee in the company – a UK tech first that will see it become the ‘John Lewis of Tech’. Upgrade Pack’s mission to transform how the most innovative companies reward and retain their most valued customers and employees will be matched by the startup internally, through an EMI scheme that will provide a share option pool of 10% of the company, for all its people.

Inspired by the hugely successful John Lewis Partnership, co-founders of Upgrade Pack, Craig Unsworth and Urchana Moudgil want to create a sense of ‘real ownership and reward’ for everyone at the company, so that with each client, partner and user the company gains, the rewards are shared by all its employees.  A recent pre-seed valuation values the employee shares at £667,000, which is expected to increase to £1.5 million at its new seed valuation in early 2019. Should Upgrade Pack achieve unicorn status, the employee share pot would be valued at £77m.

Craig Unsworth, Founder and CEO of Upgrade Pack commented:

“Since our inception we’ve always said that we wanted to build a unique type of company; the John Lewis of Tech. We firmly believe that if we want to change the way the most innovative companies reward their employees, then we need to practice what we preach. We’re intensely proud to be the first UK tech company to give all employees share options. Building a company isn’t easy, and it’s only right that everyone that contributes to it, is rewarded for it”.