This week on TechCrunch’s founder-focused podcast, Construct Mode, Isabelle Johannessen is joined by Sarah Lucena, the CEO and co-founder of Mappa, a behavioral intelligence platform that makes use of voice AI to decode human conduct in lower than 60 seconds.
Lucena bought the concept for Mappa after making an attempt to construct a advertising and marketing workforce however regularly feeling like she had made the unsuitable hires. “And I used to be so pissed off as a result of I used to be hiring for what I believed have been the precise expertise. It appeared nice on paper however didn’t actually work in actual life,” Lucena mentioned.
She had discovered firsthand that hiring is usually based mostly on markers of success like faculty levels, earlier work expertise, and a intestine intuition. However she knew there needed to be a greater method. So she developed Mappa and spent years making a proprietary dataset based mostly on lots of of interviews that allowed her workforce to investigate conduct based mostly on biomarkers indicated via individuals’s speech patterns. By way of this course of, the Mappa workforce discovered that to make the precise rent the primary time, a candidate can’t simply be nice on paper; in addition they should be appropriate.
“There’s no trait that’s good or unhealthy inherently; it’s extra of what atmosphere do you set that particular person in, and what roles are higher aligned with individuals’s kind of tendencies and types. In order that’s how we’ve been eager about defining compatibility,” Lucena mentioned within the podcast interview.
Mappa is powered by an all Latinx workforce that is aware of how irritating it’s to be ignored based mostly on superficial biases or an absence of the “appropriate” experiences. She describes them as underdogs that perceive this downside on a private stage.
“We’re all underdogs. We’re all people which have been ignored in some extent. And I suppose that makes it much more essential that we’re those constructing this,” Lucena mentioned. “Having individuals like us constructing this expertise, on the stage we’re doing, with the standard we’re in a position to get to the market and serving our shoppers the best way we do. It additionally opens up a door for others to return and be a part of and know that there are a number of methods nonetheless to construct expertise.”
Lucena’s finest recommendation for early-stage founders who’re hiring is to take your time and make certain the compatibility is there from the start to keep away from the trouble of hiring, firing, and rehiring for a similar function.
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June 9, 2026
Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Viewers Growth is led by Morgan Little. And a particular due to the Foundry and Cheddar video groups.
