Recognition belongs in Slack
Your team already opens it every morning. A separate "recognition portal" is a portal nobody opens. We never ask people to switch tools.
About Culture Engine
We’re building the recognition layer teams actually use.
Most recognition tools fade fast. We built Culture Engine because we watched it happen on our own team. So we put recognition where work already happens, attached real rewards to it, and added AI draft help for the part nobody has time for.
What we believe
From quiet effort to a team habit.
Four convictions shape every decision we make — from the schema to the Slack copy.
Real rewards beat points
A 25-Coin shoutout means something. A 250-point badge means nothing. We attached real rewards so appreciation has weight you can spend on Saturday.
AI should write the draft, not the meaning
The hard part of a shoutout isn't typing — it's pausing long enough to notice. AI handles the words. The intent stays human.
You only pay for what redeems
Coin balances don't bill until they're actually cashed out. No shrinkage tax on unsent appreciation. No license fees on people who never log in.
How we got here
Four years. One conviction.
Culture Engine started as an internal tool we built for our own team. We're opening it up because we think every team deserves recognition that actually lands.
- 2023
Built for our own team
We built the first version for our own team at GROW AI — frustrated by every recognition tool we'd tried. It became part of how the week actually ran.
- 2024
Real rewards, not points
We swapped internal tokens for real rewards — gift cards, prepaid cards, and donations through Amazon, Apple, Target, Visa Prepaid, and 3,500+ other options. Recognition stopped being symbolic.
- 2025
AI draft help
Most managers told us "I would send shoutouts if I had time to write them." So we added an AI drafting layer on Pro that hands you a first draft to edit — reviewed in one tap, sent in two.
- 2026
Open to everyone
After a security and privacy hardening pass and a complete rewrite of the redemption stack, we opened Culture Engine to teams beyond GROW AI.
Our team
Built by experts, driven by recognition.
Help us build the future of recognition — bring your skills, your ideas, and your ambition to a team that ships every week and uses what it builds.
Liz
CEO · Culture Engine
Jean Santos
Founding Engineer
Gabriel
Designer
Join Our team
Making real recognition the default habit on every team that opens Slack.
Get in touch
Let’s start a conversation.
Tell us about your team. We reply to every message ourselves, within one business day.
- hello@cultureengine.ai
- Remote-first team
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