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Tanika Davson

Co-Founder of Cubbi, UK's first parental-leave discount platform; formerly Senior Manager, Public Affairs at British Business Bank

Jul 24, 2026

speaker_0HOST
4:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
4:25
There's one moment that Olivia and I now laugh about quite a lot and it was actually our first opportunity to pitch Cubby so we went along to some kind of pitch event we got through to the final and we had to stand in front of an audience and pitch and we thought we nailed it to be honest and then we sat down and someone said to us was that your first pitch? So it clearly didn't land in the way that maybe we wanted it to.
4:50
And I remember following that as well.
4:52
We got a lot of advice from a lot of people that when you're starting out early, you think that because they're so experienced, they must know more than you.
5:01
And you end up kind of like chasing some tails in lots of different directions.
5:06
And yeah, I don't know if there was like a huge moment of failure there, but it was really about number one, like learning to tell our story.
5:15
And understanding that not everyone is going to get us and we aren't for everyone, but our target group does.

10 MINS LATER

speaker_0HOST
15:48
Even in that period of time, was there ever a point where you genuinely thought like things might not work out here? Like it's not going at the pace I need or that I want or envisaged and you were kind of having some doubts in that regard?

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