When Olivia and Tanyka Davson pitched the BBC Dragons on our screens in February, it would be fair to say they stole the show.
Olivia was nine months pregnant at the time of filming and the relevance to their startup Cubbi, a discount platform for new and expecting parents, was clear.
“We’d already built our community up to about 10,000 users when the BBC got in touch,” Olivia tells me in Digbeth, Birmingham for Founder Friday. “I was inundated with emails and I thought it was spam so I just ignored it!
“They sent four emails before I was like, okay, let’s take this seriously. And from then, it moved really quickly.”
Tanyka adds: “When they found out she was pregnant, they were like: Okay, we need to get you in before you give birth!”
After receiving offers from Deborah Meaden and guest Dragon Susie Ma, they opted for the latter – and when the investment came through from the Tropic Skincare founder, they put it to good use. But more on that later.
Third time lucky
Cubbi, which is now looking to raise a further £350,000 in seed funding – with £100k already committed – almost never happened.
Olivia had built a career as a project manager at Rolls Royce, Deliveroo, McLaren Automotive and Amazon – the latter for more than five years – while Tanyka’s path had taken her through PR agency Weber Shandwick, policy roles with the UK Civil Service then senior manager, public affairs at the British Business Bank.
“We always came up with ideas,” Tanyka recounts. “We had a couple of business ideas in our twenties and we’d always get to the stage of writing a business plan.”
Olivia continues: “The first was an underwear company; then we looked at a subscription box allowing people to try black hair products. We were so passionate about these ideas – but just didn’t do them because we weren’t sure we were the right people to deliver them. And then we saw people come along and deliver our exact vision.
“So when we had this idea, we were like: yes, ‘go time’. We have to be the ones to deliver it.”
Superpower
At the British Business Bank, Tanyka witnesses founders first-hand – and realisation dawned. “I always thought people that founded businesses and raised money had a crazy skill set that I would never have: they’d all be Oxford grads and have lots of money behind them.
“At the bank, I was exposed to people just figuring it out and doing it. I was like: okay, they’re just normal people! They were telling me about the difficulties they’d been through, and how they were able to come out the other side.
“That’s when I got the bug again to start something – then Olivia had her great idea.”
Olivia had recently given birth to her first child. “Honestly, it unlocked a superpower that I’ve never known,” she says. “I used to be so worried about perception and what people thought.
“It just disappeared because motherhood is the hardest thing I’ve done in my life and so I realised I could now do absolutely anything. That was the most life-changing thing that enabled me to start on this path.”
The passion of this super-positive pitcher in the Den was ignited from a difficult place experienced by many new parents.
“I found it really scary,” Olivia says of motherhood. “Before, I would take trips down to London to visit my friends when I wanted to; on a whim, I would go shopping for a pair of new jeans; I could just book a holiday. I’d built this incredible career, and I had great financial stability.
“There was suddenly a question mark around those things. I now had this little baby who needed me, and I couldn’t just be Olivia in the same way that I was before. And that was compounded by the fact that my salary was going down and down.
“I’d been through a physical trauma in childbirth; I’d had the emotional challenges of adapting to motherhood; and then the financial thing was just an extra thing thrown in.
“I just felt like new parents deserve so much more. What we’re building here is really to try and lighten that load and make parents feel seen – remind them that they deserve a coffee, or a new pair of jeans if their jeans don’t fit anymore. And they shouldn’t feel guilty about it.”
Tanyka adds: “Students get discounts, and everyone agrees with that because students don’t have a lot of money. UNiDAYS generated tens of millions in revenue last year. So did Blue Light Card.
“We are doing the exact same thing, just for a different audience that we know spends more.”
The reference to Blue Light Card, a discount platform for frontline workers – including the emergency services, NHS, social care, teachers, armed forces and veterans – is especially pertinent after Alex Dalby, its former head of strategic partnerships, recently joined as an investor and strategic adviser. Dalby’s brother Tom founded the firm with Steve Denny.
Founder life
Both sisters had realised that they didn’t want to spend their working lives in a corporate environment.
“I worked in jobs I enjoyed, but I never really had that passion which woke me up in the night with an idea,” says Olivia. “This has given me that passion. I designed our logo in the early hours during a night feed!”
Is it the same logo in use today? “It’s developed over time. It’s much more polished now!” laughs Tanyka.
After coming up with the idea in summer 2023, Tanyka built the first iteration of the app using a no-code platform. Launched in February 2024, they saw 5,000 downloads come through in the first month and used a startup loan to hire a software freelancer to take it from “super simple and scrappy” to something polished and able to withstand heavy traffic.
Dragons’ Den
Enter the Den.
“You see people who get really combative when the Dragons question their business,” says Olivia. “So we went in with a positive mindset.
“It’s your baby; but at the end of the day, you need to recognise that not everyone will understand you. So although we had a bit of back and forth with Touker [Suleyman], it was a positive exchange. It was all super light hearted.”
She continues: “Touker didn’t get it. He suggested we should just focus on offers for baby stuff, whereas the business that we’re building is for people who may have gone from being super independent to a new world where something is thrown in the mix… it can be jarring.”
The three male judges turned down their offer of 10% stake of the business for £50,000, but Meaden offered the money for 20%.
However Susie, making her debut, is a new mum herself – and agreed to stump up the full amount for 10%. The Tropic Skincare founder first found fame on The Apprentice but has grown turnover to $100m.
“We tried to go in with quite a reasonable offer because we didn’t want to be one of those businesses where the whole episode is focused on discussing our valuation,” says Tanyka.
“We also went in there with the attitude of ‘this is a really good opportunity to learn’. We hadn’t pitched a huge amount before that and knew we were never going to sit in front of a Peter Jones, Touker Suleyman or Steven Bartlett again.
“It was a really good opportunity for us to get immediate feedback and understand the kind of questions we might be asked.”
The pitch lasted for two hours. “On the actual day, we got into some really deep discussions which weren’t shown. They were probably boring for viewers!” reveals Tanyka.
“We had a really long conversation with Steven about marketing strategies and the funnel. It was a really good, constructive conversation that gave us a lot to take away.”
What was the most difficult question they were asked, I wonder?
“Steven asked us why we decided to launch with an app rather than a web platform, which was fair,” answers Olivia.
“But from our perspective, we had our eyes on building a companion for parents and being accessible – so being able to share push notifications about new brands and engage with them to stay relevant. It’s much more sticky.
“But it was an interesting conversation and we do now have a web platform too.”
On the Ma-ney
Once Susie’s investment came through, they used the money to work with a development agency and build a truly scalable platform.
“It had to be solid for the increased traffic we were going to see when the episode aired,” says Tanyka.
“Also before, we were approving every single user by hand. One some days we would have like 1,000 approvals to do!
“So we invested in automation which does about 90% of our approvals now. That has been incredible for us and also a great user experience because users can get approved in two minutes, whereas before they might have to wait 24 hours.”
The sisters say Susie has “just been incredible in general”. “She’s been really generous with her time,” says Tanyka.
“Her office is about half an hour from where I live, so we’ve been able to go and have meetings with her there. She’s let us use her studio in her office, and lent us her graphic designer.”
Olivia adds: “She sent me a gift when I had my son, which was lovely.”
They are now bringing forward on the roadmap a planned expansion to parents of older children.
“Lots of parents struggle with things like nursery fees, for example,” says Tanyka.
Vision
The user base is now in the tens of thousands with 300 brand partners. With the momentum from the Den, the sisters are aiming to reach over 100,000 users and 500 brands by the end of the year.
Olivia concludes: “We have this incredible vision which goes far beyond discount to deliver meaningful support for new parents.
“We are led by our users. We take their feedback and bolt on the features they want. We’ve been building the car while driving it! And I think the expansion to older children is a perfect example of that.
“When we launched, I contacted nearly 1,000 brands and we got 30 to say, yeah, we’ll join you. Now I’m barely doing any outreach because we’re getting so much inbound.
“The tables have turned. And it’s really exciting.”