This week on TechCrunch’s founder-focused podcast, Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen was joined by Sarah Lucena, the CEO and co-founder of Mappa. Mappa is a behavioral intelligence platform that uses voice AI to decode human behavior in less than sixty seconds.
Lucena got the idea for Mappa after her own frustrating experiences trying to build a marketing team. She continually felt she had made the wrong hires. She was hiring for what she thought were the right skills, and candidates looked great on paper, but it did not work in real life.
She learned firsthand that hiring is typically based on markers like college degrees, previous work experience, and gut instinct. Knowing there had to be a better way, she developed Mappa. She spent years creating a proprietary dataset based on hundreds of interviews, allowing her team to analyze behavior based on biomarkers in people’s speech patterns.
Through this process, the Mappa team found that to make the right hire, a candidate cannot just be great on paper. They also have to be compatible. Lucena explained that no trait is inherently good or bad. It is about what environment you put that person in and what roles are better aligned with their tendencies and styles. That is how the company defines compatibility.
Mappa is powered by an all Latinx team that knows the frustration of being overlooked due to superficial biases or a lack of the so-called correct experiences. Lucena describes them as underdogs who understand this problem on a personal level. She believes it is important that people like them are building this technology, as it opens a door for others to join and shows there are multiple ways to build technology.
Lucena’s best advice for early-stage founders who are hiring is to take your time. Be sure the compatibility is there from the beginning to avoid the hassle of hiring, firing, and rehiring for the same role.