How She Turned a Crowded Tube Ride into a Deep Tech Startup (and Nearly Lost It All) | Dash Tabor
What if your business could predict the future — even with barely any data?
In this episode, I sit down with Dash Tabor, founder and CEO of TUBR, a predictive analytics platform turning small data into big insights.
Dash started TUBR after one too many packed Tube rides in London — and ended up building a deep-tech company using a physics-based machine learning engine that helps small businesses forecast demand, sales, and staffing needs with minimal data.
But her journey wasn’t smooth.
She’s lost £500k in a day, rebuilt her team after losing her co-founder mid-fundraise, and turned down “life-saving” investor cash on moral grounds — all while keeping TUBR alive and growing.
We get into the raw parts of being a founder:
- Fundraising in a volatile market
- Building deep tech without a technical background
- Understanding investor psychology
- Rebuilding after disaster
- And why she left London for Sheffield
This is one of the most brutally honest founder stories yet.
Chapters:
00:00 - Why founders should never take “trenched” investor money
00:41 - Introducing Dash Tabor & the TUBR story
02:11 - The London Tube moment that sparked the idea
03:47 - From overcrowded trains to AI innovation
05:05 - What “machine learning” really means for small businesses
07:09 - Predicting croissants, customers, and chaos
08:57 - How much data is really needed for AI to work
10:21 - Sponsor: Opus — the network for entrepreneurs
10:41 - How Dash built deep tech without being a coder
12:28 - Leaving a stable job to build something from scratch
14:19 - When Liz Truss’ budget wiped out her customers overnight
18:09 - Losing her co-founder mid-fundraise
20:24 - Rebuilding the team from zero
21:09 - Hitting rock bottom — and the “keep going” moment
25:16 - The near-collapse and the £10K that saved TUBR
26:17 - Fundraising lessons: quantity over tranches
28:22 - The reality of raising as a female founder
31:13 - How to “build the house you want to live in” with investors
32:32 - Saying no to bad money — even when desperate
35:14 - Choosing Sheffield over London
38:48 - Building community and talent outside the capital
39:28 - Finding balance (or trying to) as a founder
43:10 - Who TUBR serves today & their new product “Pulse”
45:57 - What’s next: partnerships, scale, and profitability
47:53 - The real answer: talent vs luck in startup life
49:49 - Where to follow Dash & TUBR
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
