When investors assess tapouts, the numbers make an immediate impression. The Los Angeles-based children’s mental health coaching platform has reached $5.5 million in annual recurring revenue, grown 174 percent year-over-year, served over 200,000 kids across 28,500 live sessions, and raised $7.4 million from venture capital firms including Joyance Partners and Satori Neuro. For a company that launched in 2021, those are remarkable benchmarks in a competitive market.
What is less visible in those figures, but equally critical to them, is the design infrastructure that holds that growth together. At the center of it is Eri Mineta, tapouts’ Lead Visual Designer and an award-winning designer with ten years of experience building digital systems for global technology companies and high-growth startups. Her work at tapouts shapes every touchpoint the company produces, from the weekly email a parent reads after their child’s session to the pitch deck that supported the company’s latest funding round.
From Template to Product: The Session Recap Redesign
Every week, tapouts sends parents a recap email summarizing what their child practiced in that week’s coaching session. It is one of the company’s highest-frequency customer touchpoints and one of its most important retention tools, a direct line between the program and the home where parents can reinforce the skills their children are building.
When Mineta joined tapouts, that email was a dense, text-heavy template. The visual hierarchy was minimal, and the warm brand personality tapouts had built around emotional intelligence was largely absent from the communication. For a subscription platform whose retention depends on parents feeling connected to the value their children are receiving, that gap had real consequences.
Mineta redesigned the system from the ground up. The result is a weekly communication that functions as a product rather than a newsletter: clearly organized into what the child learned that week, a practical challenge for reinforcing the skill at home, a tip for parents on how to support their child, and a preview of the following session. Custom illustrations, a warm and structured layout, and the personalized signature of a tapouts clinical expert bring a sense of care and credibility to every delivery.
“The redesign made it overwhelmingly clear what was happening in each session. When parents can see and feel the value of what their child is learning, it does not just improve communication. It raises the perceived value of the product and the brand itself.”
The project earned recognition from three independent bodies: a 2025 Gold Award from the Horizon Interactive Awards, a 2025 American Graphic Design Award from GDUSA, and a Silver at the 2025 NYX Awards in the email marketing campaign category. The recognition confirmed what the redesign was already demonstrating inside the company: a well-designed email is not a communication expense. It is a retention asset.
One Designer, Every Touchpoint
Most companies would divide Mineta’s responsibilities across three or four specialists: a brand designer, a product designer, a communication designer, and a print production designer. At tapouts, Mineta holds all of those roles simultaneously.
Her portfolio at the company spans the Session Recap Email system, original character development and brand illustration, the main landing page, sign-up and checkout flows, the Thrive product line UX, referral program design, coach-facing materials including newsletters and workshop guides, investor materials including the Wefunder campaign visuals and webinar presentations, and print collateral for live events including banners, flyers, and branded tablecloths.
Managing that range requires more than versatility. It requires a deliberate methodology for moving between contexts without losing coherence.
“I work across branding, product design, communication design, and print, roles that are usually separate jobs. The key is always understanding the scope first. When the problem is still unclear, I start visualizing early, so we can find the pieces of the puzzle together and clarify the challenge as a team.”
That approach, introducing visual prototypes before problems are fully defined, builds alignment across functions. When the same designer is shaping the brand, the product flow, and the investor materials, every output shares the same visual logic. In a startup where speed and consistency are both critical, that integration is a structural advantage.
Design Without a Media Budget
tapouts’ growth has been driven primarily through direct-to-consumer subscriptions, with 85 percent of children attending their first session and 72 percent of families converting to a paid subscription after that experience. Average lifetime value per child sits at $810. These outcomes depend on how clearly the product communicates its value at every stage, from the first digital impression through weekly ongoing engagement.
Mineta draws a clear line between what design contributes to those outcomes and what traditional marketing spend achieves.
“Unlike advertising, which uses budget to drive user behavior, design works differently. It surfaces insights users did not know they had and lets them make their own decisions. When you make something visually clear and relevant for your audience, it contributes directly to the business without spending a dollar on promotion.”
That distinction has shaped her approach across every project at tapouts. The company’s community fundraising campaign on Wefunder, an equity crowdfunding platform through which tapouts has raised over one million dollars toward its current funding goal, included all visual assets, webinar presentation materials, event announcements, and email follow-up sequences that Mineta designed in full. The investor pitch materials that supported the company’s venture rounds were built by the same designer who maintains the weekly email that keeps subscribers engaged.
When the same person is responsible for how a company looks to its customers and to its investors, the message the company sends carries the same visual authority across every context.
Recognition Across Disciplines
Mineta’s work has earned recognition from multiple independent judging bodies across different design disciplines. The three awards earned by the Session Recap Email redesign reflect her professional work at tapouts. Beyond her full-time role, she also pursues self-initiated personal branding projects that have earned their own recognition. For MOGUMOGU, her airport poster campaign earned a Best in Category at the Horizon Interactive Awards, while the overall brand identity received a recognition from GDUSA. For OMUSUBI, her branding work received a Silver at the London Design Awards as well as recognition from GDUSA.
Together, these distinctions span email design, poster campaigns, and brand identity systems. That range reflects the same breadth visible in her daily work at tapouts and provides independent confirmation that her output consistently operates above the industry standard, regardless of discipline or context.
What Design Leadership Looks Like in Startups
The model Mineta represents is increasingly relevant for venture-backed companies trying to scale without expanding headcount at the same rate as revenue. A designer who can move between brand identity, product UX, investor communications, and customer retention materials is not simply versatile. That designer is infrastructure.
For tapouts, the results are visible in a product that retains tens of thousands of families, has attracted top-tier venture investment, and has built a visual identity that carries coherently from digital screens to live events. As the company moves toward its next growth milestones, the design systems Mineta has built will scale with it.
The numbers behind tapouts tell a compelling growth story. The design behind those numbers tells a different one: that visual clarity, consistency, and intentional communication are not finishing touches. They are the foundation.
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