Today, we’re proud to announce that Mappa has oversubscribed a $3.4M seed round led by Draper Associates, with participation from Serac Ventures, Riverwalk Capital, Sher Ventures, Seagrass, Angel Squad (Hustle Fund), Grão VC, SoGal Ventures, The Pitch, and AngelHub Mexico.
BACKGROUND
Mappa is an AI-powered behavioral intelligence platform designed to solve one of the most persistent problems in hiring: bias, inefficiency, and missed insights during candidate evaluation. Traditional interviews rely heavily on gut feel, résumé filters, and subjective impressions — approaches that often fail to reveal how someone will truly perform in high-stakes situations.
With Mappa, hiring teams can see beyond the résumé. Our platform decodes more than 30 vocal biomarkers — from pitch variability and speech rate to the use of action-oriented verbs and noun density — to assess communication style, ownership, empathy, and confidence. In under 60 seconds, Mappa analyzes over 100,000 behavioral data points, delivering predictive insights that help employers make smarter, faster, and fairer hiring decisions.
Mappa was founded by Sarah Lucena, Pablo Bergolo and Daniel Moretti. Sarah, a former analytics marketer turned AI entrepreneur from Brazil, is one of fewer than 50 Latin American women globally to lead an AI company. In less than two years, she took Mappa from concept to multi-million dollars ARR and 100+ enterprise clients across the U.S. and LATAM.
Pablo, 2x Founder with one exit, brings deep analytical expertise — 10+ years in statistics and econometrics. Daniel, medical student turned software engineer, has 10+ years across Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, and AI.
In under two years, Mappa grew to over six figures in annual recurring revenue, fully bootstrapped. The U.S. market opportunity became impossible to ignore — recruitment and talent retention challenges are intensifying, costing organizations time, money, and momentum.
This funding lets us scale faster, expand reach, and deepen the behavioral intelligence already transforming hiring for our customers.
PLATFORM
We’ve built a proprietary AI stack and data models that process over 100,000 behavioral data points and layer them with public information to create multidimensional profiles that predict both performance and cultural alignment before a hire is even made.
Key platform capabilities include:
CUSTOMERS
For K2, a leading financial services and fintech innovation agency, the impact of Mappa was felt almost instantly. In an environment where hiring speed can determine project success and team chemistry is non-negotiable, K2 needed to know how candidates would actually show up under pressure.
“Mappa gave us immediate clarity on how candidates respond to pressure, take ownership, and communicate across functions. We’ve gone from interviewing to same-day job offers. It’s now an essential part of our hiring stack.”— Jacky Korn, Founder & CEO, K2
K2’s experience is far from unique. Across industries, companies are using Mappa to strip away the guesswork that has long defined hiring.
The results speak for themselves:
Behavioral decoding and compatibility scoring, giving hiring teams the confidence to act decisively.
Savings per hire by minimizing costly turnover and improving retention.
Reclaimed per role through streamlined, data-driven decision-making.
INVESTORS
For Mappa’s investors, the decision was driven by both timing and technology. The hiring landscape is undergoing a structural shift: enterprises are expected to fill roles faster, retain talent longer, and operate with leaner teams. Traditional hiring methods rely on surface-level qualifications and subjective impressions that leave too much to chance.
“Resumes tell you the highlights of what someone has done — Mappa AI shows you how they’ll perform in the real world. By turning live, behavior-based data into hiring signals, Mappa is giving companies a smarter way to spot talent, build stronger teams, and uncover the next generation of leaders.”— Tim Draper, Founding Partner, Draper Associates
The cost of a bad hire can reach six figures, while turnover ripples across teams and slows growth. The availability of AI tools capable of delivering real-time, high-accuracy behavioral insights is aligning with a buyer mindset ready for adoption.
NEXT
This raise is more than capital — it’s fuel to scale our mission: enabling connections to succeed, every time.
Mappa helps organizations make their most critical people decisions with speed, precision, and fairness. We’re expanding our go-to-market and technical teams, accelerating R&D for more nuanced behavioral analytics, and deepening integrations with enterprise workflows so behavioral intelligence becomes a standard layer in hiring worldwide.
If you’re building a team and want to reduce bias, cut time-to-hire, and improve retention, we’d love to talk. The future of connections is measurable — and it’s here.