Selecting the right job candidate can be a challenging process even after reviewing resumes, cover letters, and conducting interviews. Hiring managers frequently depend on their personal biases or gut feelings, which makes the process far from scientific.
This challenge inspired Sarah Lucena to create Mappa, an AI-powered behavioral intelligence platform designed to remove some of the guesswork from hiring. Mappa trained an AI model to identify voice patterns that correlate with specific traits like communication style, empathy, and confidence. Job applicants simply answer questions from Mappa’s AI agent, and the platform then provides hiring managers with a shortlist of candidates whose traits are a good match for the role.
Mappa is a Top 20 finalist in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 in San Francisco. Lucena explained the company’s mission is to truly understand people, noting that they view traits not as good or bad, but as compatible or incompatible with a position.
Lucena founded Mappa in 2023 with her two co-founders, Pablo Bergolo and Daniel Moretti. The startup has raised 3.4 million dollars in a seed funding round led by Tim Draper’s investment firm, Draper Associates. In under three years, Mappa has grown to serve more than 130 customers in the United States and has achieved over 4 million dollars in annualized recurring revenue.
A significant advantage for Mappa is its data. The company built highly curated datasets specifically for understanding human behavior. While Mappa initially tried to assess candidates using video submissions and online presence, it found voice analysis to be the most effective technique.
According to Lucena, Mappa’s platform has already helped companies find employees who stay longer. While the standard annual employee turnover rate is around 30 percent, she states that employees hired through Mappa have a turnover rate of only 2 percent.
Lucena says Mappa’s primary goal is to help companies find the best people, which often leads to a more equitable hiring process. To date, Mappa has facilitated over 3,000 hires, and more than 60 percent of those hires were women, LGBTQ+, or immigrants. Lucena, who was born and raised in Brazil, expresses pride in creating more opportunities for these groups.
Looking ahead, Lucena envisions Mappa evolving from a services company into an infrastructure provider. The startup’s API is gaining traction with companies that want to use its behavioral analysis for applications beyond hiring. For example, Tim Draper personally uses Mappa to evaluate founders his firm is considering for investment, and the educational platform Re-Skilling.ai uses it to identify skills that students can improve.
In the future, Lucena believes Mappa could be used to help approve loan applications for people without an extensive credit history. She sees Mappa as a tool to assess individuals more fairly across a wide range of situations.