How to avoid bad hires in early-stage startups

This week on TechCrunch’s founder-focused podcast, Build Mode, Isabel Johansen is joined by Sarah Lucena, CEO and co-founder of Mappa, a behavioral intelligence platform that uses voice AI to decode human behavior in less than 60 seconds.

Lucina got the idea for Mappa after trying to build a marketing team, but constantly felt like she had hired the wrong employees. “I was so frustrated because I was hiring for what I thought were the right skills. It sounded great on paper but didn’t really work out in real life,” Lucina said.

I’ve learned firsthand that hiring is often based on markers of success like college degrees, prior work experience, and intuition. But she knew there had to be a better way. So she developed Mappa and spent years creating a proprietary dataset based on hundreds of interviews that allowed her team to analyze behavior based on biomarkers signaled by people’s speech patterns. Through this process, the Mappa team found that to hire the right person the first time, a candidate can’t just be great on paper; They must also be compatible.

“There’s no inherently good or bad trait; it’s about the environment you put that person in, and what roles align best with people’s tendencies and styles. That’s how we were thinking about defining compatibility,” Lucena said in a podcast interview.

Mappa is run by an all-Latino team that knows how frustrating it is to be overlooked based on superficial biases or lack of the “right” experiences. She describes them as vulnerable people who understand this problem on a personal level.

“We’re all underdogs. We’re all people who have been somewhat overlooked. And I think that makes it even more important that we’re the ones building this,” Lucena said. “Having people like us building this technology, at the level that we do, with the quality that we can bring to market and serving our customers the way that we do. It also opens the door for others to come and join and know that there are still multiple ways to build technology.”

Lucina’s best advice for early-stage founders who are hiring is to take your time and make sure there is alignment from the beginning to avoid the hassle of hiring, firing, and rehiring for the same role.

Isabel Johansson is our host. Build Mode was produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development is led by Morgan Little. And special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.