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 received the thought for Mappa after attempting to construct a advertising crew however regularly feeling like she had made the improper hires. “And I used to be so pissed off as a result of I used to be hiring for what I assumed had been the best abilities. It seemed nice on paper however didn’t actually work in actual life,” Lucena stated.
She had discovered firsthand that hiring is often primarily based on markers of success like school levels, earlier work expertise, and a intestine intuition. However she knew there needed to be a greater means. So she developed Mappa and spent years making a proprietary dataset primarily based on lots of of interviews that allowed her crew to investigate conduct primarily based on biomarkers indicated by way of folks’s speech patterns. By way of this course of, the Mappa crew discovered that to make the best rent the primary time, a candidate can’t simply be nice on paper; in addition they must be appropriate.
“There’s no trait that’s good or dangerous inherently; it’s extra of what surroundings do you place that individual in, and what roles are higher aligned with folks’s type of tendencies and kinds. In order that’s how we’ve been fascinated with defining compatibility,” Lucena stated within the podcast interview.
Mappa is powered by an all Latinx crew that is aware of how irritating it’s to be missed primarily based on superficial biases or a scarcity of the “appropriate” experiences. She describes them as underdogs that perceive this drawback on a private stage.
“We’re all underdogs. We’re all of us which have been missed in some extent. And I suppose that makes it much more vital that we’re those constructing this,” Lucena stated. “Having folks like us constructing this know-how, on the stage we’re doing, with the standard we’re in a position to get to the market and serving our purchasers the way in which 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 know-how.”
Lucena’s greatest 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. Construct Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Viewers Improvement is led by Morgan Little. And a particular due to the Foundry and Cheddar video groups.
