The question I get most isn't about features or pricing. It's "Why tacos?" 🌮
Fair question. The answer starts in 2016, with a little Slack bot I built so the team I was working with could thank each other with taco emojis. People smiled, and over ten years, more than 3,000 teams give tacos to say "thanks".
But the taco is the fun part. The real answer is about why I wanted to build HeyTaco in the first place.
HR software that didn't feel like anything
In 2015, I was working on a talent platform focused on employee happiness, which meant spending a lot of time with HR software. Most of it was thorough and well-meaning: surveys, performance reviews, dashboards. But using it felt like nothing. Nobody closed one of those tools and walked away feeling appreciated.
Most of that software was built for leaders and HR teams. Everyone else was filling out forms.
The best teams did this naturally
The best teams I'd been part of had what those tools were missing. People noticed each other's work, out loud, all the time. A quick "thanks for jumping on that" in the channel. A shoutout after a rough launch. Nothing formal. It just happened, and you could feel the difference. People helped each other more, and they stuck around.
People rarely leave a job because of one bad day. They leave after months of feeling like nobody notices.
Feel-good software
That's where the idea I now call feel-good software came from: tools that work well and make you feel good using them. Software that nudges people toward the small, human stuff that makes a team work.
Slack was quickly becoming the place where work actually happened, so that's where recognition belonged, right in the conversation. Anyone could thank anyone. It took seconds. And everyone could see it, which turned out to matter a lot. When you watch a teammate get thanked, you start noticing who else deserves a thank-you.
Why tacos, really
Because tacos make people smile.
A taco is playful without being silly, and pretty much everyone likes them. It's inclusive, too. It lands just as well at 9 am on a Tuesday as it does after a big launch, and nobody has to wonder whether it fits their team's culture. Sending one feels like a little high-five, not a formal award. It's also a bit unexpected, which is exactly what makes it stick. And it works everywhere, from a five-person startup to a hospital unit to a bank's ops team.
Where it's going
Today, 3,000+ teams use HeyTaco, from tiny startups to global companies. The core idea hasn't changed since that first Slack bot: small moments of appreciation add up.
I dream that one day, appreciation won't feel like a program or a policy. It'll just be how teams work. And maybe, just maybe, a taco will be the universal shorthand for "I see you. You did great."
