The Pitch #169 Mappa: Can Voice AI Find You a Job… or a Date?
Oct 8, 2025
Sarah Lucena, Founder and CEO of Mappa, a startup that decodes voice signals to enhance matching for jobs and relationships, shares her inspiring journey from corporate dissatisfaction to entrepreneurship. She discusses how Mappa's technology analyzes vocal traits to predict behavioral patterns and improve connections. Investors, including Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures, explore Mappa's potential beyond recruiting, considering applications in dating and coaching. Ethical concerns are raised about misuse, while Sarah emphasizes responsible development.
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Founder’s Origin Story
- Sarah explains her personal journey from a bubbly child to an empty executive and founding MAPPA to fix connection problems.
- She describes building MAPPA to decode voice signals to match people with compatible organizations.
Voice Signals Reveal Behavior
- MAPPA combines linguistic and prosodic voice signals to infer behavioral tendencies beyond resumes.
- They use multiple signals together because single metrics don't tell the whole story.
Layer Your Model And Validate Continuously
- Build layered models: extract signals, map to studies, train on customer data, then validate with feedback loops.
- Use a non-proprietary presentation layer to translate technical outputs into human-readable reports.