How Tuatara Strengthens Culture and Recognition in a Remote Team
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Customer story

How Tuatara Strengthens Culture and Recognition in a Remote Team

Tuatara Turned Recognition Into a Daily Habit That Helps Remote Teammates Feel Seen, Valued, and Connected

Tuatara is a boutique digital transformation agency from Colombia

For 10 years, Tuatara helped multinational companies build stronger digital environments across strategy, branding, and software.

People

~20

Industry

Digital Transformation

Location

Colombia

Work model

Remote-first

Tuatara cards

A decade in business, six years with Karma

Tuatara is a boutique agency from Colombia that helps multinationals and large companies navigate digital business transformation. The team supports clients across marketing, sales, branding, and technology, delivering full digital environments that combine strategy, creative, and software. Tuatara has been in the market for ten years, and Karma has been part of that journey for six of them.

Today, Karma has become part of Tuatara’s everyday rhythm—so much so that, as Fabrizio González, CEO of Tautara puts it, “it’s been longer time with Karma than without Karma right now.”

The challenge: protecting culture when the team went fully remote

Like many modern agencies, Tuatara shifted to fully remote work after 2020. While the move offered flexibility, it also introduced a new challenge: keeping culture alive when people aren’t sharing the same space.

Fabrizio describes the reality clearly: “We do all work online right now. Since pandemic in the 2020 we are a full online agency.” And while remote work worked well operationally, he points out what became harder to maintain: “One of the biggest challenges that we get into this digital way of working is the culture and how the culture is still being around but with everyone in their houses.”

That’s where recognition became more than a nice gesture. It became a system Tuatara needed in order to keep people connected, appreciated, and aligned—no matter which city they were working from.

Discovering Karma: a Slack-native tool that felt right from the start

Slack was already the heart of communication at Tuatara, so Fabrizio took a practical approach. He started exploring apps inside Slack that could enhance the team experience, especially around people and culture.

What made Karma stand out immediately was how it looked, how it felt, and how clearly it communicated. Fabrizio recalls, “I saw Karma and I saw another tool. And I made a really quick benchmark just to understand which was going to be the one that we were going to adopt for long term. I didn't even try the other tool!” He explains why the decision was so fast: “I think that the main asset was the branding of Karma. I really liked how the brand is communicating and the landing page is really nice. It had really cool user interface and illustrations and stuff.”

For Tuatara, brand quality isn’t superficial — it’s a signal of how seriously a company takes its product and users. Fabrizio sums it up like this: “I understood that companies live as long as their brand impacts and that is something Karma made really good.”

I understood that companies live as long as their brand impacts and that is something Karma made really good.

Fabrizio Gonzalez Maroso

CEO at Tuatara

Turning recognition into a daily cultural habit

At Tuatara, culture isn’t an abstract statement — it’s something the team actively practices. Fabrizio describes their internal philosophy as mutualism, a way of working built on transparency, empathy, and recognition.

Karma became a natural extension of that mindset. “These kind of software helps us a lot to drive the cultural assets of the company,” Fabrizio explains. “We are a company that is from humans to humans, so we have a really transparent approach and we recognize our limitations, the other's limitations, and also recognize their success.”

For Tuatara, Karma isn’t used as a formal HR program. It’s used as a daily, human way to say: you were seen. “So Karma comes as a support into the well and good relations, the good philosophy and the reason of the company to exist to help saying to the other ‘hey, I recognize you, I see you there, I saw your effort and this is for you’,” Fabrizio says. “So we promote it a lot inside the company.”

25k+Karma points issued
480+Rewards redeemed
95%Active users
240+Achievements received

Easy adoption, lasting usage

Rolling out Karma wasn’t difficult, largely because it didn’t require introducing a separate platform or changing workflows. That Slack-native experience was essential.

Even the small initial learning curve — understanding commands — quickly became part of onboarding. “I do remember that people was like ‘okay, what are the commands to trigger Karma’,” Fabrizio says. “But actually that's right now in our onboarding process. So when someone new gets here, it's in our onboarding process. This is Slack, this is Karma, this is how it works, and this is what actually you can get from it.”

But actually that's right now in our onboarding process. So when someone new gets here, it's in our onboarding process. This is Slack, this is Karma, this is how it works, and this is what actually you can get from it.

Fabrizio Gonzalez Maroso

CEO at Tuatara

Building closeness across the team, beyond project boundaries

In agency environments, teams often work in tight project groups, which can unintentionally create distance between departments or specialists. Karma helped Tuatara bridge that gap by making appreciation visible across the entire company.

Fabrizio describes the shift: “I think that the improvement is the closer that people get to others when they receive or give Karma.” Before Karma, recognition existed, but it wasn’t centralized or consistent. “The congratulations was made like ‘hey, I can buy you an empanada to say thanks, let's go out or something like that.’ But you cannot capitalize information like that in long term,” he explains. With Karma, recognition becomes part of the shared team space, and it can reach people who aren’t constantly collaborating day-to-day.

Keeping Karma meaningful, not transactional

Over time, Tuatara also learned how to guide recognition so it stays genuine. Fabrizio noticed patterns like teams saving Karma for end-of-week moments and keeping messages too generic. “We get something that we call karma traffic and it is when team members used to traffic with karma points,” he says.

He recalls an example where recognition became concentrated into one weekly burst: “I remember that the engineers team, they were a team of five at that moment, didn't use the karma in all the week. So they expect to keep it to the happy hour moments, which is a meeting to close the week, to deliver their karmas to their own teams.”

To keep Karma useful for the whole organization, Fabrizio introduced a simple rule: recognition should include context. “At some point I had to intervene because the idea of using Karma is also defined and it has to have a project, a task, a verb of what you did good,” he explains. That way, recognition isn’t just positive — it becomes informative.

When it comes to productivity, Fabrizio is careful not to oversell the idea that Karma directly changes output. “I don't think that there is a direct line in productivity and Karma,” he says. But he does acknowledge a real emotional effect: “I think that it hits more of emotions, the feelings that I get when doing a task. When I know that I'm getting a karma, I might do it a little bit better.”

I would say that Karma is like a great platform to help you deliver a little bit more of the soul of your company and the culture.

Fabrizio Gonzalez Maroso

CEO at Tuatara

A rewards store that actually gets used

For Tuatara, one of the strongest reasons Karma stays active year after year is that it leads to tangible rewards the team genuinely wants. Fabrizio explains the simple logic: “Karma gives you direct benefits you can touch.”

The rewards range from fun to practical, and they’re tailored to the team’s real preferences. Fabrizio laughs about one standout favorite: “The most popular one I would think is going to be the pizza approved by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” Other rewards reflect what remote teammates value most: time, support, and flexibility. “Half day free or full day free? No job, no questions,” Fabrizio says. Some rewards even have longer-term impact. “And this is the most popular one that is salary raise for almost $20 monthly,” he explains. “Yearly is going to be like 500 USD of additions in the year.” Tuatara also uses group rewards to build shared momentum. “Right now all of us betting for a day off in a park which is called Makute,” Fabrizio says.

Why Fabrizio recommends Karma

For Tuatara, Karma is not about gamification or competition. It’s about strengthening the soul of the company and keeping people connected in a distributed environment.

As Fabrizio puts it, “I would say that Karma is like a great platform to help you deliver a little bit more of the soul of your company and the culture.” And in a world where remote work can create distance, he sees Karma doing the opposite: “I think that the technology in Karma is bringing together teams or team members. I think it's a good asset and a good value for the things that it could help.”

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Карма бот политика конфиденциальности

Effective date: 18 August 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how Sliday LTD ("Sliday", "we", "us", or "our") collects, uses, shares, and protects personal data. It covers both the Karma application (for Microsoft Teams, Slack, Telegram, and the web) and the https://karmabot.chat website.

Who we are and how to contact us

The data controller is Sliday LTD, a private limited company registered in Cyprus under company number HE450506, with its principal place of business at Pavlou Valdaseridi 2A, 1st floor, Larnaka, Cyprus, 6018.

For any privacy-related enquiry, or to exercise your data protection rights, contact us at hi@karmabot.chat.

Privacy matters are overseen by our Legal Advisor / Operational Security Manager, Stas Kulesh. A dedicated Data Protection Officer has not been appointed, as Sliday LTD is not required to appoint one under Article 37 of the GDPR; privacy responsibilities are held by the Legal Advisor.

Personal data we handle and where it comes from

From the Karma application

When your organisation installs and uses Karma, we process the following personal data, obtained from Microsoft Teams / Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) and from your use of the application:

  • Display name — from Microsoft Teams / Microsoft Graph
  • Email address — from Microsoft Teams / Microsoft Graph
  • User Principal Name (UPN) — from Microsoft Graph (/me)
  • Microsoft Entra (Azure AD) object ID and tenant ID — from Microsoft authentication
  • Profile photo — from Microsoft Graph (/me/photo)
  • Team and channel names — from Microsoft Teams
  • Karma activity (karma given and received, associated messages) — from your use of the app

Where Karma is used with Slack or Telegram, the equivalent identity and workspace data is obtained from that platform instead.

From this website

  • Contact details you give us — such as your email address and name when you subscribe to updates, request a demo, or contact support
  • Usage and device data — IP address, browser type and version, pages visited, date, time and duration of visit, referring page, and similar diagnostic data
  • Cookies and similar technologies — see "Cookies and website analytics" below

Why we process personal data

We process personal data to:

  • Identify you and link you to your organisation's Karma workspace
  • Operate the core recognition ("karma") features, leaderboards, and adaptive cards
  • Display your name and profile photo within the app
  • Deliver notifications and service communications
  • Administer subscriptions and billing
  • Provide customer support and respond to your enquiries
  • Monitor, secure, maintain, and improve the service, and detect and address technical issues
  • Send newsletters, marketing, or promotional material where you have chosen to receive it — you can opt out at any time via the unsubscribe link in any email, or by contacting us

Lawful basis for processing

We process personal data on the following lawful bases under the GDPR:

  • Performance of a contract — to provide the Karma service to your organisation
  • Legitimate interests — to operate, secure, and improve the service, where not overridden by your rights
  • Consent — for marketing communications and for non-essential cookies and analytics, where consent is required
  • Legal obligation — where we are required by law to retain or disclose data, including for tax and accounting purposes

Where your organisation is the controller and we act as processor, processing is carried out on your organisation's documented instructions.

Who we share personal data with

We share personal data only with the sub-processors listed below, each of which is necessary to deliver the service and is engaged under an appropriate data processing agreement. This is the complete list of sub-processors with access to personal data. We do not sell personal data.

Service sub-processors

  • DigitalOcean — application hosting and managed database
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) — profile photo storage (S3)
  • Cloudflare — edge delivery and web application firewall
  • Microsoft — authentication, the Teams platform, and Microsoft Graph
  • Stripe — subscription billing and payment processing
  • Sentry — error monitoring
  • MailerLite — notification and marketing email delivery

We do not store or collect your payment card details. That information is provided directly to Stripe, our payment processor, whose use of your personal information is governed by its own privacy policy (https://stripe.com/privacy). Stripe adheres to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council.

Website analytics and marketing providers

The https://karmabot.chat website additionally uses:

We may also disclose personal data where required to do so by law or in response to a valid request by a public authority, or where necessary to protect our legal rights, prevent or investigate wrongdoing, or protect the safety of users or the public.

Cookies and website analytics

Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your device. We use cookies and similar technologies (including beacons, tags, and scripts) to operate the website, remember your preferences, keep the service secure, and understand how the site is used.

The cookies we use fall into these categories:

  • Essential cookies — required to operate the website and keep it secure
  • Preference cookies — to remember your settings and choices
  • Analytics and marketing cookies — set by the providers listed above to measure traffic and advertising performance

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to notify you when a cookie is set. If you refuse cookies, some parts of the website may not function correctly.

We do not currently respond to browser "Do Not Track" (DNT) signals.

How long we keep personal data

We retain personal data for the duration of your organisation's active subscription and for six (6) months after subscription cancellation, after which it is deleted. This applies to customer account and identity data, profile photos, and karma transaction records.

  • Database backups operate on a rolling 7-day point-in-time recovery window, so any backup containing erased data is automatically superseded within 7 days.
  • Upon a verified data deletion request, we action it as promptly as reasonably possible and in any event within one month, as required by the GDPR.
  • Billing and accounting records may be retained for longer where required by law.
  • Operational data — error telemetry, security logs, and backups — is disposed of automatically as it ages out of the relevant service's retention window.

Full details are set out in our Data Retention and Disposal Policy.

Your data protection rights

Subject to applicable law, you have the right to:

  • Be informed about how your personal data is used
  • Access the personal data we hold about you
  • Rectification — to have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected
  • Erasure — to have your personal data deleted
  • Restriction — to request that we restrict processing of your personal data
  • Data portability — to receive your data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format
  • Object to our processing of your personal data
  • Rights relating to automated decision-making and profiling — Karma does not carry out automated decision-making producing legal or similarly significant effects
  • Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on your consent

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at hi@karmabot.chat. We may ask you to verify your identity before responding.

Making a Subject Access Request (SAR)

To submit a Subject Access Request, contact us at hi@karmabot.chat. We respond to all SARs within one month, as required by the GDPR, unless the request is complex or numerous, in which case we may extend the response time by a further two months and will tell you if we do. We maintain a data mapping process that lets us locate and retrieve all personal data held about a specific data subject across our systems — principally the production database and the profile photo object storage — so that a SAR can be fulfilled thoroughly.

International transfers and safeguards

Karma production data is hosted in the United States (DigitalOcean SFO region). As Sliday LTD is established in the EU (Cyprus), this involves a transfer of personal data to a third country.

Such transfers — and transfers to other sub-processors located outside the EU/EEA, including Microsoft, AWS, Cloudflare, Stripe, Sentry, and the analytics providers listed above — are protected by appropriate safeguards, principally the Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) incorporated into each sub-processor's Data Processing Agreement, supplemented by those providers' certification frameworks, including the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider participates.

Sliday LTD takes all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Your right to complain to a supervisory authority

You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority.

Our lead supervisory authority is the Office of the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection of the Republic of Cyprus:

You may also lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in your own country of residence.

Security of data

The security of your data is important to us. We apply technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk, including encryption in transit, access controls, vulnerability scanning, and error monitoring. However, no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Children's privacy

Our service is not directed at anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will take steps to remove it.

Our service may contain links to sites we do not operate. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for, the content or privacy practices of any third-party site. We encourage you to review the privacy policy of every site you visit.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated policy on this page and update the effective date at the top. Where changes are significant, we will notify you by email and/or a prominent notice on our service before the change takes effect. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.

Contact us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, contact us:

  • By email: hi@karmabot.chat
  • By post: Sliday LTD, Pavlou Valdaseridi 2A, 1st floor, Larnaka, Cyprus, 6018