Tap My Back

Context

Tap My Back was already an established employee recognition and feedback platform when I joined Build Up Labs in January 2021 as an Entrepreneur in Residence and took over as CEO. The company had been founded in 2015 and had a working product, existing clients and a team — but it needed a clear turnaround to compete in an increasingly crowded employee-experience market.

The mandate was not to build another startup from zero. It was to rebuild the team and operating model, strengthen the product and its distribution, and position the company for a strategic exit.

The mandate

Together with the Build Up Labs board, we established an approximately two-year roadmap to grow the SaaS business and make it attractive to the right strategic buyer. The plan covered product prioritisation, team restructuring, go-to-market experiments, customer-success improvements and acquisition readiness.

This was a turnaround, not a launch. The work required balancing what to keep, what to rebuild and what to stop — while maintaining service to existing clients and building momentum for new ones.

What I worked on

Rebuilding the team and operating model: I restructured the team around generalists who could move across customer success, marketing and sales, rather than narrowly defined roles. This was essential at the stage the company was in.

Product prioritisation: I focused the roadmap on the features that mattered most for retention and competitive differentiation — peer and manager recognition, continuous feedback, pulse surveys and integrations with tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack.

Positioning and go-to-market: I sharpened the value proposition for a specific segment of the market and tested channels including direct outreach, content and product-led growth mechanisms.

B2B and enterprise sales: I led the sales motion, moving upmarket from smaller teams to larger organisational contracts.

Customer success: I rebuilt the post-sale experience to improve retention and generate case studies that supported the acquisition narrative.

Strategic integrations: Partnerships and integrations that made Tap My Back easier to adopt inside existing tool stacks.

Acquisition planning: I prepared the data room, financial records and commercial narrative that a strategic buyer would need to evaluate.

Buyer discovery, negotiation and due diligence: I identified potential acquirers, led conversations and managed the due-diligence process.

None of this was solo work. Rui Gouveia, João Pereira, Dário Carrasquinho and the wider Build Up Labs team provided strategic, technical and operational support throughout.

Outcome

The business grew and entered an acquisition process that led to its sale to CultureBoost, a Texas-based company, in August 2023. I remained involved through a three-month hands-on transition and subsequently provided additional strategic support to the new owners. The acquisition was announced publicly only after that transition had been completed.

A compact timeline:

• January 2021 — joined Build Up Labs as EIR and took over as CEO • 2021–2022 — turnaround: team rebuild, product focus, positioning, growth experiments, customer-success improvements • Early 2023 — acquisition readiness and buyer conversations • August 2023 — sale closed to CultureBoost • August–November 2023 — hands-on transition • Late 2023–early 2024 — additional strategic support to new owners

Evidence

The acquisition was covered by ECO and announced on LinkedIn after the transition was complete. Tap My Back was also recognised in Capterra Shortlist for Employee Engagement Software in 2022 and 2023.

Lessons

Define the USP earlier than feels necessary. In the first part of the turnaround, we did not invest enough in developing a differentiated proposition for a specific segment. A clearer USP earlier would have made product and distribution decisions more focused.

Small teams need entrepreneurial generalists. My first instinct was to hire for a narrowly defined customer-success role. What the company needed was someone comfortable moving across customer success, marketing and sales.

Finding a strategic buyer takes time. A buyer who values a product for its strategic potential is different from one who only evaluates it through current profitability. Identifying that buyer requires time and deliberate preparation.

Cheap experiments can create disproportionate outcomes. The buyer that ultimately acquired Tap My Back discovered the company through a simple Indie Hackers post. It reinforced a principle I still use: when a test is fast, inexpensive and low-risk, run it.

Due diligence is also a negotiation. Transparency matters, but so does preparation. Technical and commercial questions raised during due diligence can also become mechanisms for renegotiating the transaction.

What came next

The Tap My Back turnaround also shaped what came next. The go-to-market experiments and frameworks developed during this period later informed the creation of GrantsFinder and AskCory inside Build Up Labs.