Nugget started over a glass or red wine in a Shoreditch pub one Monday afternoon, after Katie had slid into my (Harriet’s) DMs.

Friends and colleagues had started having babies, and I saw firsthand the financial pressure they were under when navigating this huge life milestone.

 I’ve always considered myself financially savvy, I’d saved for every major event in my life. But somehow, despite always knowing I wanted a child, I’d never thought about saving for a baby. And I quickly realised I wasn’t the only one.

I like solving problems, and it became clear that maternity pay and leave was a space that needed change. The first idea? An insurance product. But honestly… where do you even start with that?

Katie, meanwhile, had a one-year-old and hadn’t managed much of a maternity leave. Running her own business meant there wasn’t the time or financial security to take proper leave, as she says, ‘businesses don't wait for babies.’ She’d heard from a mutual friend that I had ideas bubbling away about maternity pay, and we connected.

The Nugget journey began with us posting on social media and within a few months, we’d gained thousands of followers. It was obvious: there was a huge gap in the market for honest, practical education around parental leave. 

We had big ideas for what we wanted to build. But before we could do any of it, we realised there was a vital missing piece: education, support and transparency.