How to avoid bad start-up pay

This week on the TechCrunch startup podcast, Build ModeIsabelle Johannessen is joined by Sarah Lucena, CEO and co-founder of MapA behavioral intelligence platform that uses voice AI to identify human behavior in less than 60 seconds.

Lucena came up with the idea for Mappa after trying to build a sales team but constantly feeling like she made the wrong hire. “And I was very disappointed because I was applying for jobs that I thought were good skills. It looked good on paper but it didn’t really work,” said Lucena.

He saw firsthand that hiring depends on indicators of success such as college degrees, previous work experience, and genetics. But he knew there had to be a better way. So he created Mappa and spent years creating a database based on hundreds of interviews that allowed his team to analyze patterns based on signals expressed through human speech. Through this process, the Mappa team discovered that to make the right hire the first time, the candidate may not be great on paper; they should also be compatible.

“There is no culture that is inherently good or bad; it’s more about the place you put that person, and the roles that best fit the habits and styles of people. That’s how we’ve been thinking about defining integration,” said Lucena in a podcast interview.

Mappa is run by the entire Latinx community who know how frustrating it is to be ignored based on bias or lack of “correctness”. He describes them as young people who understand the problem individually.

“We’re all naive people. We’re all neglected people on some level. And I think that makes it more important that we’re the ones who make this happen,” Lucena said. “Having people like us building this technology, at the scale that we’re doing, is the kind that we can go to market and serve customers the way we do. It also opens the door for others to come and join and know that there are many ways to develop technology.”

Lucena’s best advice for startups hiring is to take your time and make sure the connection is there from the start to avoid the hassle of hiring, firing, and hiring the same job again.

Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode created and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.