Toby Hunt, Earth Cubs: “Gaming and entertainment can engage exceptionally large audiences rapidly…Earth Cubs will do the same.”

The environmental Edutainment platform that is creating the next big children’s brand.

Father of two children, Toby Hunt realised an opportunity existed at the intersection of education and entertainment for environmental learning. Building on the natural curiosity children have of the world in their early years, Earth Cubs is beginning to become a household name and is turbocharging environmental education for the next generation of global citizens. With its beautiful branding, characters and multimedia presence, Earth Cubs is on a mission to become the next big thing… the Peppa Pig of Planet Saving. Read on to learn more about Toby’s journey and his vision for Earth Cubs in the years to come.

1. Describe your startup in two sentences

Earth Cubs is the environmental Edutainment platform, inspiring primary age kids to love the world. Its explorable games rewards learning with real planet protection, planet-saving storytelling is brought to life through video content, and vibrant action-based teaching resources support teachers in the classroom.

2. What gave you the inspiration?

I am a father that wants the absolute best for his children’s future – a future that has been adversely affected by climate change. Having had an exit a few years ago, I was afforded the opportunity to really think about the impact I wanted to have on the world – my co-founders and I wanted to build a company designed from the ground up to give and have impact at scale. We know from years of research that kids that grow up with a fascination about, and access to, nature will grow up to care more, and we have the tools and experience to create awesome things that can inspire this love of the world. Gaming and entertainment can engage exceptionally large audiences rapidly, as well as achieve significant value. Earth Cubs will do the same.

3. How did you meet?

Pete (Product) and I met in my first company – I actually hired him out of unity due to his unbelievable design talent. Pete and I have worked together for over 10 years and he is now a wonderful designer, developer and product builder. Jon (Production) and I been friends for over 30 years – his career has been in advertising and production. He is a writer, producer, marketer, comedian, and strategist. All of us are fathers, passionate about supporting the SDGs and our children’s futures.

4. What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?

Our greatest success to date has been achieving product-market fit – bringing something to the market that our beneficiaries love. With very little marketing spend our app has had over 180k downloads and our resources, and app, are being used in over 3,500 schools. Our ratings on the app stores are almost all 5 stars and we have been able to prove that connecting learning, entertainment, and impact works – to date our Earth Cubs have protected over 250 acres of rainforest through our wonderful partner, Rainforest Trust UK. Building a model that inspires kids, supports parents and teachers, and raises awareness for planet-savers is wonderfully rewarding.

Our greatest challenge has been building a platform that has critical mass of content to maintain engagement. It was always going to be a risk and a challenge to embark on a mission that requires a level of maturity before being able to appropriately test our business mode. But, we are so proud to have assembled an exceptional and passionate team of creators that have managed to deliver so much. We must keep creating, but we are now ready for growth.

5. How has Covid affected your business?

If anything, Covid has had a positive effect on Earth Cubs. The EdTech industry is in boom as schools and parents alike look for digital solutions to support a new way and accepted way of delivering learning outcomes. In the early days of Covid, we did look to see what was going to be the most impactful way for us to help, and that was by providing teaching resources to teachers and parents. We launched in June of 2020 and specifically targeted teachers to support them with their new requirement of home learning, and before we knew it we had had over 40k downloads of our resources.

6. What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?

We are filling a climate and environmental learning gap. Although changing, we hope, that this important education becomes part of the curriculum. We measure our impact through engagement in the app and our videos, and through teacher use of our resources and campaigns. Secondly, many of the resources we provide to schools are action orientated, and we are measuring both the use and outcomes of these campaigns. We are also having an impact on the environment. Children playing the game are rewarded for learning progress with real world environment protections through Rainforest Trust UK. Finally, we are raising awareness in children, parents, and teachers through storytelling. We can measure this through engagement, but will strive to go further, working with our partners to measure their impact through this engagement. Our ultimate impact of inspiring the next generation to love the world is hard to measure until Earth Cubs has been around for 15-20 years, but we have faith that we can provide the right inspiration for our Earth Cubs’ progression.

7. When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up?

TH: Inventor

JL: Children’s TV Presenter

PT: Architect

8. If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?

If I were not working in Edutainment, I would be starting up a business in green energy – there are so many opportunities to support this transition. That, or electric motorbikes!

9. What would you save in a fire?

Children, wife, LEGO collection.

10. Who is your role model/ greatest influence? And why?

Bill Gates. He built something that changed the world and is now putting his resources towards tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges. I would take immense pleasure from helping others at scale with both finance and support.

11. What is your happy track?

Happy by Pharrell Williams. (Our first dance track).

12. What’s your motto?

Live, laugh, love.

13. What are you most looking forward to in 2021?

Finalising this funding round and then seeing all our graphs get steeper. We are a coiled spring!