#169 Mappa: Can Voice AI Find You a Job… or a Date?

Josh: Welcome to The Pitch, where startup founders raise millions and listeners can invest. I’m Josh Muccio.

Lisa: And I’m Lisa Muccio. 

Josh: And this is one of my favorite pitches of all time. 

Lisa: What?

Josh: Yeah. We've spoken to hundreds of founders and there was just something special about the founder on today's episode, Sarah. The company is called Mappa. They’re raising a 1.6 million dollar seed round.

Lisa: Mappa analyzes the sound of your voice. The pitch, the tone, what words you use, all communicate something about who you are as a human. Mappa decodes all that to help companies hire people that are a better culture fit.

Josh: There's not many pitches where a founder checks every single box you're looking for, but it was such a good deal that we actually wrote the check before inviting her on the show, and we chose not to tell the investors because I wanted their honest reactions not knowing that we've already bet on this company.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Josh: So I was. So nervous going into it because I felt like, like what if there's something about this business that we totally overlooked and it's actually a horrible company and they're just gonna tear it apart, and then we're gonna publish it and we're invested.

Lisa: I wasn’t nervous at all. I think there's a lot of seasons where we have a really powerful female founder that I talk to on a call and there's like an instant Yes. Kavitta from Nectar is one of them.

Josh: Mm-hmm. 

Lisa: Madeline from Gemist, as soon as I was on the call with Sarah. It was like a clear, yes. 

Josh: So we’ll see how it plays out in the pitch room! Welcome to The Pitch season 14, recorded in Napa. And I may be biased, but this is our best season yet

Lisa: You say that every season.

Josh: Well it is! 

Lisa: The Pitch for Mappa is coming up, after this. 

Josh: Lisa and I, we’re going to be touring different cities meeting listeners and LPs over the next few months, we’ll be in SF in October, Austin and NYC in November… because! We’re raising Fund II! You can RSVP to join us at one of these meetups at pitch.show/events

[BREAK]

Welcome back to the pitch for Mappa. Let’s meet THE INVESTORS.

Cyan Banister with Long Journey Ventures
Someone of his caliber is taking this seriously? I’m just stoked about it

Charles Hudson with Precursor Ventures
Sometimes a business is what it is, not what you want it to be

And three new investors to the show - Immad Akhund, CEO of Mercury and prolific angel investor
I think with one day of coaching, this would be a 20 million valuation

Monique Woodard with Cake Ventures
I'm looking for a founder that excites me. And I like weird things.

And Rohit Gupta with Future Communities Capital
Maybe I'm not charming!

Just before The Pitch started, we took the VCs outside the studio to try the Mappa demo on their phones. They had to answer one simple question.

Hello! Welcome to Mappa. We specialize in behavior analysis through voice. To start, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

After giving their 30 second response, the investors filed into the pitch room.

Josh: Mappa [clap] 

Lisa: Okay, good luck

Sarah: Hi. Hey everybody. 

[hellos]

Sarah: Hi. Nice to meet you, Sarah. 

Monique: I’m Monique, Nice to meet you. 

Charles: Hi, I'm Charles. Nice to meet you. 

Sarah: Nice to meet you. 

Rohit: Rohit. Great to meet you. Watch your head.

Sarah: Nice to meet you. Thank you. 

Immad: Immad. How's it going? 

Cyan: Nice to meet you. Hello.

Sarah: Nice to meet you. Thank you for being here. I'm super excited. My name is Sarah Lucena, and when I was seven years old, I was this bubbly child that would speak with every single soul I could put my eyes on. And I remember thinking to myself, whoa, adults are frustrated. And everybody that I knew, they were either unhappy with their marriages, or, their families, or their jobs. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm gonna be a happy adult. Many years passed by, I was 22, living in Uruguay. I'm originally from Brazil, was running a huge operation. Coordinating the efforts for advertisements and marketing for over seven countries in Latin America. Huge budget, huge expectations. I was on the top of the world and I couldn't feel more empty. And I thought, oh, I become one of those adults. and at that moment I said, but why? Why? I am putting myself in that position that I promised so many years ago that I wouldn't be living in. And that's where we decided to create Mappa.

Mappa is a behavioral analysis company that understands people beyond their resumes, beyond their LinkedIn profiles, beyond the surface level information that is not only limited, but sometimes only tells a half story. I'm sure you all have been in that position in which, you find somebody that is amazing, You spend so much time getting to know them through interviews and hiring processes. And it's only when they start working with you that you'll say, oh. This is not gonna work. Our mission at Mappa, it's make every connection successful every time so people can become everything they are meant to be and help companies and organizations to actually reach their full potential because they have the right employees on the team. By understanding who you are, we are actually then able to connect you with organizations that share your same DNA We extract a couple voice signals and based on those voice signals, we correlate each one of those signals with behavior tendencies and aspects of you as a human being. The way you actually face the world, solve problems and relate to other people. We started a couple of years ago and I know you guys just did, a quick demo of our product, so I'm curious to know if you'd like to see your results. 

Cyan: Yeah

Rohit: Sure. Yeah

Cyan: Absolutely.

Charles: Yeah

Sarah: You can open your phones and go to your emails. You should have received a Mappa email by now. 

Rohit: Well there's, there's a few pages here. I think it's pretty interesting. My favorite line here is you rely less on charm or enthusiasm.

[laughter]

Monique: How shady

Immad: You probably learned to have zero reliance on that, huh. 

Rohit: Ahh, people love me for my brains. Wow. 

Immad: But does it all ring through to you? Is there anything where you're like, I don't agree with this. 

Rohit: Um, I thought I'm, I always think I'm charming, I guess. 

Monique: Mine says you lead with energy under pressure. You stay positive and controlled. You keep steady rhythm, ramp intensity fast and push momentum without losing structure. 

Sarah: Do you feel related to that? 

Monique: I do. If I'm being honest though, it does feel a little horoscope-y.

Rohit: Oh, I can see that. 

Sarah: That's a great feedback though, because how does that work, right? Like we extract a bunch of different voice signals from both a linguistic and a prosodic aspect. So linguistic is first person markers, that's, uh, how many times we refer to yourself versus how many times you refer to other people 

Rohit: Ahhh

Sarah: the amount of verbs, for example, you choose to use. That's another linguistic marker that allows us to understand if you are somebody who is more action driven or someone that needs to build conviction before acting. Phonetic aspects or signals would be like the pitch, the jitter, the shimmer, the pauses, the frequency of your speech, all those things alone, they don't tell us the full story, but all those signals combined is where we get to the behavioral profile of a person. 

Immad: So, I kind of think of behavioral as like this culture part of an interview. And when I'm asking to try to understand someone's cultural attributes, I might ask them like, you know, what's the hardest thing you worked on? And like, obviously the demo had a pretty basic question. Is the longer interview that you do, does it pose questions like that that try to like get to the root of someone's behavior? 

Sarah: Exactly. 

Immad: Okay. What's the best question that you feel like really gets to the heart of it?

Sarah: I think, like, it really depends on the role that you are hiring for. And each one of those roles, they have a specific questions that are designed. So if we are looking into an engineer, for example, it's usually a technical interview because we wanna see how they actually solve problems, And that's compatible on how you guys approach, problems and challenges? And that comes a lot through speech. 

Cyan: So I'm, I know recruiting is one area, but I've been thinking about this problem a lot lately. What about, um, you know, a lot of times in sales, for example, like if you're going to talk to someone, it's very useful to know their theory of mind. And what kind of language works with them the best so that you can tailor your speech to them. Right?

Sarah: Yeah. 

Cyan: Also inter- like interpersonal conflict with, with employees. Like what other markets are you gonna get into besides this? 

Sarah: I love what we're bringing to the table. Essentially because we see our technology as infrastructure level technology, and what we are building is the future of connections. We launched through hiring, but we always had a much bigger view in that sense. Why hiring was our first approach because we were able to close the feedback loop. At this point, we not only have data from the candidate and the companies as they join our processes, but the interviews that they do together that, feed our models and then if they hire or not, and if they do hire, we also offer payroll solutions that allows us to understand for how long they stick together. So all that information closes the whole feedback loop that have been training our models so far.

But at this point, we are starting to expand beyond hiring. We already have launched our API and we are serving different markets. We have seven universities paying to use Mappa, to analyze how their students actually move, We are working also with a bunch of different venture capital firms that are using Mappa to vet founders into their pipelines. and we are also in conversations with a big, big, big dating app that wants to apply our technology to enhance their matching algorithm. 

We raised our seed round, and are incrementing this raise now here today with you guys because we do wanna consolidate our fit within the HR market before expanding towards those industries. But to your point, our growth is definitely horizontal. We don't see ourselves becoming an ATS or a hiring suite, rather than a API that power other solutions. 

Immad: Can you tell me a little bit more this training your own model? Like what's the data, what are you training it for? Is it like fine tuning existing models? Like yeah, just give us a little bit more there. 

Sarah: Yeah, for sure. Very high level, four layers. We have a first layer, which is the mathematical layer abstracting those signals. This is not proprietary, it's not easy to do, but it's like, it's math. So each one of those signals, like the density of verbs or the pitch of your speech, those are things that you can extract. We have that first layer in which we extract those signals. Then we have our first model that we built over every single available academic study that correlates those signals with behavioral traits and aspects. It's not like personality traits in which you are a builder, or a wizard, or a magician, it's not like that. It's literally not putting you in a box, rather understanding you for who you are and that organization for who they are to be able to build on compatibility. And after that we have a third model that fits on this data set that correlates the behavioral signals with the nuances or the densities of each one of the signals and get injected by the voice samples that we extract from our customers. And this is the one responsible to actually get to the prediction. The prediction is then confirmed or denied based on the rest of the processes. So we have a bunch of different feedback loops embedded into the process that allow us to tell our models, Hey, it worked or it didn't work. And then the fourth layer, it's the prompting one. That's not proprietary. So that's where we get the report and translate so everyone can understand what that signal meant and have their reports in their hands.

Immad: That's so cool. So you said you put people in boxes. Or, you said you don't put them in boxes, but you kind of do, what is like an example of a box, like this person is an extrovert or what, what are like types of boxes 

Sarah: I know that it's still a way of defining or profiling somebody.

Immad: Sure. Yeah. 

Sarah: But the reason why we say we don't put people in boxes is because profiles are never the same. But there are a bunch of signals that allow us to understand things. So the verbs one, that I previously mentioned. The first person marker that people sometimes think, oh, if you say too many I’s, you're probably super self-centered. That's not necessarily true. people that don't say I enough, they usually are not as well committed to what they are saying as you would expect them to be. So I’s are important and talk also about your relationship with control. Just before getting here, I did the demo on myself. and it stated there that I have control issues, which is true. I'm working on those.

Rohit: You’re a founder, you’re a founder

Sarah: I'm working on those. But it's not just because of the I’s, it's the I’s combined with other signals that get me to that point. So for example, emotional valance, it's a prosodic signal that allows us to understand how emotionally connected you are to what you are saying. We are working with some investors that use our technology for their vetting pipeline. And one of the signals they're always looking for is high emotional valence. How emotionally connected this person is to what they're building which allows them to understand if they are gonna go all the way or if they might get bored at some point.

Rohit: What happens if I drink three cups of coffee and do it? 

Sarah: Of course we are all contextual human beings, right? So that's why on our processes, we never get samples from a single context.

Rohit: Okay 

Sarah: So if we start the process with us, for example, you guys did the demo. It's a very short moment, but now we have your email. We are gonna scrape your information, extract every single podcast you have ever been on. 

Rohit: Oh, interesting

Sarah: Then we are gonna do an onboarding with you as a client, we are gonna be recording that call. Then we are gonna have you interviewing folks that is also recorded. We are gonna be extracting that as well. So we get to a point in which the data is pretty stable to make sure that we are not, making snappy assumptions. 

Monique: How does the algorithm treat accents, regional accents, international accents, you know, ways that different cultures speak differently? 

Sarah: Yeah, and I really appreciate that question because as an immigrant you can imagine that was one of the things we had in mind. for the linguistic, signals, the impact, it's near zero. When we are analyzing the content of the, like transcript, we are not analyzing what you are saying, but how you are saying things. 

Monique: Yeah. 

Sarah: So that's what we are trying to extract. That's not impacted, but then there are some prosodic signals that get impacted. Volume is one of them.

Monique: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah: So we had to train those models based on the countries we operate. If I use our US, model, I got a result that actually treats me as somebody who is not necessarily, in control. 

Sarah: Or that can be overly emotional just because I'm loud. , and this is something that we actually experimented and made sure that based on the location of the person and the information that they add on their profile, we know they, where they are from and we treat the data accordingly. 

Monique: Mm-hmm. 

Rohit: So, but if you don't know somebody's background, then you're likely to screen them with the wrong model.

Sarah: Not, not really.

Rohit: Like, like, let's say you applied for a job. 

Sarah: Go for it. Yes. 

Rohit: Right? I don't know you, I don't really ask anybody's background. That’s none of my business. Right. The model thinks you're American then -

Charles: But you can connect it to an ATS. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Charles: Like you're gonna have other metadata. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Rohit: Maybe somewhere out there that has to say she's Brazilian.

Sarah: No, we, we extract that data.

Charles: Yeah. 

Sarah: Right. Like we scrape it. 

Rohit: Okay. 

Sarah: Because when you join, like let's say you are gonna apply for a job. The first thing I'm gonna ask on your process, it's your LinkedIn profile. So I'm scraping everything there and I can locate where you are from. 

Rohit: Okay. That's fair. 

Immad: What is your kinda, I'm about to say key KPIs, but anyway, what are your KPIs and how are they growing? Like what's the revenue? All that kind of stuff. 

Sarah: Yeah. Um, so we just surpassed $3.5 million in annualized revenue. 

Immad: Wow. Congrats.

Sarah: We did that completely organically. We haven't invested a single dollar in client or talent acquisition so far. We started our company around two and a half years ago. we closed our first year at, uh, $13,000 in annual revenue. The second year it was already half a mil. Last year we did 1.5 and we are on track and aiming, and the reason why I'm here is that we wanna accelerate that to get to 5 million at the end of this year. 

Cyan: Wow.

There it is! She’d been waiting to share those numbers.

$3.5 million is the highest ARR we’ve ever heard on the pitch.

The question is, what are the terms? That’s coming up in just a moment.

Immad: Who is paying and when are they paying? 

Sarah: Our clients are always the companies. We are a B2B company. We are a success based company as well. So that means that they only pay if they convert, which obliges us to be pretty good at our jobs. So talking about KPIs, nowadays we have a 92% conversion rate from interview to hire. This is something that we have helped companies to reduce from around three months to under a week. And at this point, every single client that makes the first hire makes the second one, at least in the last quarter. If we look historically, that rate is 78%. And we are extremely excited to just have launched our SaaS business model with the API. It's pure software, it's pure SaaS. It's been scaling quite fast. We haven't started with our go-to market strategy yet, so it's been more opportunistic sales with investors and universities that we were connected through our network. And they pay around $12 per report. 

Rohit: How many customers do you have? 

Sarah: 135 active customers. 

Rohit: They're on annual contracts or? 

Sarah: Enterprise level, they are quarterly contracts. We have been working with Enterprise since September last year. And we have had zero churn so far. Their contracts have been doubling size quarter over quarter. For startups and SMBs we have had 1.9% churn for the whole 2024.

Cyan: What was your raise for your seed round? How much did you raise? 

Sarah: We raised $3.4 million. It was my first institutional round. We did have a friends and family smaller round. And we see that there is an opportunity to increment that raise to push forward on this API play sooner than later. 

Cyan: And what was the valuation? 

Sarah: We raised a 15 million post money valuation.

Cyan: 15? 

Sarah: Yes. 

Sarah: One, five. 

Rohit: When did you raise the seed round? 

Sarah: We just closed two months ago. 

Rohit: Okay. 

Cyan: And how much are you looking to raise now? 

Sarah: Now we are raising 1.6 million to complete $5 million. We see that we are gonna be in an extremely strong place to raise a series A pretty soon. At this point we are creating an extension, of course, at a different valuation. We've been growing quite a lot in the past few months. From the beginning of the year up until now, we've already added more than a million dollars in annualized revenue. and we expect to continue on that path as we have a pretty strong pipeline, not only with SMBs and startups, but also enterprise level deals. 

Cyan: And do any of the insiders want to participate in this? 

Sarah: Uh, on this extension? 

Cyan: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah: We are not even inviting them at this point, just because we see that this is the last round in which we wanna bring folks in, in the sense of like having multiple investors that can help with our growth. So we are actually optimizing for diversity in terms of our cap table. It's our first institutional round and we know our next one is gonna be a much bigger round and we wanna concentrate that in one or two, maximal three investors. So that's for us the last chance of actually having people that we believe on and that believe on us, participating on the team. 

Immad: What's your current runway? 

Sarah: We are cashflow positive. 

Immad: Oh, nice. What are your margins? 

Sarah: As we are success basis, sometimes it fluctuates, but we are 82% on our hiring product and when it comes to SaaS, we are over 94%.

Immad: And when you say success based, how much do you charge per success?

Sarah: We charge around 25% over the monthly salary of the candidates that are hired through us. 

Immad: Like first month or annual?

Sarah: For as long as they are working together. 

Immad: Oh, wow! 

Cyan: So with the new investors that you wanna bring on, what kind of profile are you looking for? 

Sarah: On a more aspirational lens, I'm really looking to work with folks that are not afraid to reimagine what connections can look like and what human potential can look like. I'm deeply, truly attached to the idea that I can fulfill my purpose and I have the responsibility of fulfilling it, and I can only get there if I am connected with the folks that will push me forward. That's the reason behind Mappa, and that's the reason why I select the investors that join our team. But on a more pragmatical lens, we are doubling down on business development and we've been pretty intentional about, you know, leveraging our investors network. I'm an immigrant. I had to build my network from the ground up. and being in a room with folks that can open those doors makes a huge difference. So that's the kind of things that we are looking as we hit this next stage of growth. 

Immad: Um, maybe it'll be fun to kind of talk through my thought process. I kinda started with like two levels of skepticism in your pitch. Number one, recruiting in general, I don't like investing in. Tends to be seasonal. It's very hard to scale recruiting startups. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Immad: Uh, number two, my skepticism. Initially I was like, you know, it sounded a little horoscope-y. Personality test type things, I'm a bit skeptical about. What has kind of got me way more interested is, on the first side, going way beyond recruiting. And I, yeah, I think the dating application's interesting, the, sales, university, like, even like helping kids find like what kind of jobs might suit them, et cetera. I think there's like a lot of potential way beyond recruiting. And then the second bit that I quite liked is like you're asking technical questions to engineers. I think when it goes beyond personality and you can like, really get to the depth of someone, I think that's interesting. And obviously, like the fact that you're cashflow positive and have like, was it 3.5 million in annual revenue? That's super impressive for a two and a half year old company. Anyway, I'd like to invest depending on the valuation, obviously, but I think what you're building is very interesting. I'm skeptical of recruiting, but uh, I can be sold that it's a really good place to learn information on -

Sarah: I love that. And I'm a client of yours. 

Immad: Oh, nice. So as long as the money's staying in the ecosystem

[laughter] 

Charles: I share a lot of like, what Immad said, like resonated with me. We've done a bunch of things in recruiting and I think that the reason they've been hard is that there's very little customer loyalty. Because generally you're like, I will try anything that will deliver a candidate. If this works well, I'll continue to use it, but if something else new comes, and it's just been hard to build really big businesses because the customers are willing to switch providers on a regular basis. Sounds like you don't have that problem to the same degree that others do. You have very good repeat rates, you have very good conversion to hire. Uh, I'm out. Just 'cause like I've, I, we just did an analysis internally. This is the one category where we have consistently been wrong as investors. So that has like, much more to do with like our lived experience -

Immad: You're saying recruiting is the one category? 

Charles: Yeah. We looked at a, we looked at a bunch of categories -

Immad: But you're not willing to give them credit on like, the non recruiting side. 

Charles: I think what she's done is incredible. 

Immad: Yeah.

Charles: I, I just don't have the stomach for another ride, ride on the recruiting rollercoaster.

Sarah: I'll say just one thing for you to take into consideration when you are evaluating companies that are in this ecosystem in the future, if you allow me to. 

Charles: Absolutely. 

Sarah: One thing that we've been super curious about is like answering a very short question, like, is this company operationalizing the process or focusing on the problem?

Charles: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I think every solution out there is trying to operationalize a broken process. Like how you can make interviews faster or how you can make hires cheaper but the real problem is will this person stick around? That's the problem. 

Charles: That's the problem

Sarah: Right. Like, because you'll see people spend a lot of time and resources and it's still a gamble. It's still a, let's see how it goes.

Charles: Yep. 

Sarah: And I think that's what is the problem with recruitment today. Nobody's actually paying attention. Well, nobody but Mappa is actually paying attention to what the problem really is. 

Sarah: The other thing is just like optimizing a process. 

Monique: So I think your traction is really impressive, and I'm still trying to get over my level of skepticism that this is just a new version of Myers Briggs. 

Rohit: Hmm.

Monique: Right. Employers would give you a Myers-Briggs test and get your personality results and use that in, in their hiring decisions. And that was popular for a while. And now this is like the new version of that, but it was not enough to make a sustainable company because it wasn't really tackling a big enough problem for HR. I am also concerned about the potential for, for bias. And I think I just can't get around the level of skepticism that this is tackling a big enough problem that can be a huge business. So for that reason, I'm out.

Sarah: I completely respect that. 

Cyan: I'm interested in the API part of the business the most. So I'm neurodivergent and I've been using ChatGPT. When people send me messages, I put it in ChatGPT, and I ask it to decipher it for me and give me 20 different like, theory of mind, possible interpretations of what they mean. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Immad: How long are these messages? 

Cyan: Um, it varies, right? Because a lot of times when I see things that's very vague, I don't like to make assumptions.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. 

Cyan: And so I won't. And I'll just be like, well, I, I can't decipher that. And so I'll just dismiss it. But lately I've like, I've been like, you know, is this person being passive aggressive? Is this person, like, are these… These are things I've never paid attention to in my life. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Cyan: And, but other people seem to, and so I was just like, can I be a better communicator? The world that I see in the future is, you know, a husband and a wife or partners, are going to therapy. And if they could understand the language that each other is speaking. And how they process information, you could solve problems faster. Same thing with coaching, with like employees. It actually nailed my profile. It's not reloading unfortunately, but I have a very specific way of talking and a way of pausing and a way of trying to be accurate about what I'm saying and it nailed it. So that somebody who's talking to me would understand that. Like she takes awkward pauses for this reason. And so I'm really intrigued. I would like to bring you in to talk about this round. I need to understand the competitive landscape a bit more to understand how uniquely positioned you are and what, how much of a headstart you have. But I'm really impressed with your progress. I'm really impressed with you. But I would like to take a stab at possibly doing that round 

Sarah: I would love to have you in as well. I'm very inspired by you.

Cyan: Yeah. I see this, I see this as helping so many people. The thing is that we're, we're, none of us are speaking the same language. We are, all have our own perception of reality. And so being able to understand that about a person will help us achieve so much more.

Sarah: I agree with you. I love when my co-founder, Pablo, says that we are solving the asymmetry information problem. We both come from different point of views and we have our truth, but when we communicate, there is the cost of communication right there and we are not always able to get to a point in which we can truly understand each other. Right. So making that possible for every single connection that we make through life. Can you imagine the potential we are gonna unlock? 

Cyan: I can imagine it. I've been thinking about this for, for months. Like I built an app that is just to manage my friends. I leave voice notes every time we talk to each other. And then now it's suggesting like, things we can do together and how we can communicate. Because some people are more direct, some people are more reserved, some people are really outgoing. Some people you can be very blunt with. Some people take things very personally.

Sarah: Yeah. 

Cyan: And so I wanna be more mindful of that and I think more people would want that as well. So I think that part of your business is gonna, my gut tells me, is gonna be much bigger than the recruiting. Because if you give every developer the ability to dream and to use this, it's gonna change how people even develop products. 

Rohit: So like Charles, I'm a little reticent on recruiting in general, but good and bad, you know, a lot of experience. But, similar to Cyan, like I, I just see potential here. Like I was thinking of use cases like co-founder disagreements, like most starters fail because co-founders can’t get along. But if there's a way to sort of map, like, I'm saying this, they're saying that, you know, how do you, how do you build that into your product? That to me is like, more interesting than companies trying to screw workers over. Right. Or like - 

Sarah: But why do you think they're trying to screw workers over? 

Rohit: Because I mean that's, I could just think of ways that this sort of gets abused, right? And, and like that's not your problem, you know, you're building -

Immad: And how does it get abused? 

Rohit: Oh dude, in dating apps, you're like, well, let me find somebody who's weirdly compliant with my sort of, you know

Immad: Geez

Rohit: You know, it gets dark real fast, right?

Immad: Your brain definitely goes dark! 

Sarah: But that's great that you're bringing that up. Like we do have a monthly meeting at, with my team on how not to become a Black Mirror episode. 

Rohit: Yeah 

Sarah: But like even dating apps, I think like that, the difference there is that and I, I won't say you cannot because I don't wanna say something that might happen in the future, and we will have to tackle that problem. But today you cannot manipulate what you were expecting the other person to be. The other person is the other person, you are you. We are focusing on who you are and extracting that data about yourself. And that's the information we are gonna use to understand who is compatible with you. But you cannot say, oh, I, I want somebody that, you know what I mean? 

Rohit: Got it 

Sarah: But yeah, I, I, I definitely agree with you that as any technology and any innovation and anyone who dares to rethink things that have multiple implications, and me as a founder, I think like it's my responsibility to tackle those implications early on and be conscious about the power that we are building and what that means. But I'm extremely optimistic and don't take that as naive, because it's not about that

Rohit: Sure, sure

Sarah: But I'm extremely optimistic on how we can actually create good and value by, you know, leveraging people's potential. 

Rohit: Got it. Real quick, you charge 25% of salary, like on an ongoing basis. Is that for foreign and domestic hires or just foreign?

Sarah: For all hires. 

Rohit: Wow. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Rohit: Okay. Yeah, I'm in. 

Immad: That's the thing that takes you over.

Rohit: I don't know, if somebody's willing to pay that, like- 

Immad: Yeah, true

Rohit: That's nuts. 

Immad: They must be doing something right.

Rohit: Yeah, right. 

Immad: So, so three of us in, two out, I guess.

Cyan: What are the check sizes? So we know, she has an idea. 

Rohit: I'm probably around a hundred. 

Cyan: Okay. 

Immad: I’d do 150k. 

Cyan: Okay. Perfect. 

Charles: Great. Thank you so much. 

Sarah: Awesome. Thank you guys. Have a great one. 

Cyan: Yeah. Thank you. 

Immad: Bye. 

Monique: Thank you. 

Sarah: Hope you enjoy the rest of the pitches.

Cyan: Thank you. 

Sarah: And welcome on board!

Lisa: Yaaaay

[applause]

Immaud: We don't know the valuation so

Cyan: I’ll work on that for us 

Rohit: Two months ago!

Josh: Well, what do you want the valuation to be? 

Rohit: Well, that's the thing, right? 

Immad: I like the sound of, what was that previous one? 

Cyan: 15

Immad: 15 mil

Rohit: She raised two months ago. It's like, okay, I get it. 

Immad: Rohit’s already said he is gonna try to get the lowest valuations 

Rohit: We all are. Right. But like, how much higher can she go? She's not gonna double. 

Cyan: Exactly. That's why I was just like, you know, probably it will fall on 15 to 20 range. 

Rohit: Yeah.

Cyan: And um, that's very attractive. Uh

Immad: Especially for the revenue. 

Cyan: Especially for the revenue and her. I like her a lot. 

Rohit: How much did she raise to date? 

Cyan: 3.4

Rohit: That was the previous round, and then friends and family?

Immad: She said there was a friends and family

Cyan: I'm gonna guess that's probably very small. 

Rohit: Yeah, so she's probably at like four total raised

Cyan: 4 million. Probably 4.

Rohit: And she's doing three and a half. 

Cyan: Yeah. Pretty good. 

Monique: It's really good. 

Cyan: Pretty good. 

Josh: So this is the first for the show, but we actually invested in their last round.

Rohit: Oh!

Charles: Nice. 

Rohit: I asked you about follow-on yesterday. 

Josh: I was coy. I didn't say yes or no

Rohit: You would've, yeah, you would've definitely made a mess of things if you told me that 

Josh: So the thing that I think did it for me and I, and I may have taken a different test than you guys. It revealed some stuff about myself that like, I didn't even realize, but like, in thinking about it, it's true. I'm consistent, reliable, yet emotionally guarded. I keep my cool, rarely showing strong emotion, staying measured and calm even when things heat up. Trustworthy, never volatile. I wield pitch and volume like a pro. Switching gears to highlight key points and keeping listeners hooked, not just talking but performing. Sounds like a podcast host or something. I prefer overviews to specifics. Rarely bogged down on the details, always scanning the horizon. Analytical, not granular, but the like, emotionally guarded piece. Went to kind of the next step and it's like how to become a better leader. Add clarity. 

Rohit: Oh. Interesting 

Josh: With concrete details. But my calm measured style, even though it builds trust, it can come across as emotionally distant. Um, which is like, uh, I don't, I don't, I don't actually know where that comes from. I should - 

Cyan: Do you get that feedback from others? 

Josh: Never before, but like, I know it to be true. And 

Rohit: Wow.

Josh: I see in others the ability, ability to be more vulnerable. Um and, and yet I like keep people at a distance sometimes. Um. So yeah, I mean, when I got this test, it just, it kind of rocked me and I haven't become that better leader yet. But just knowing that like, I'm emotionally distant and to like, not suppress that anymore, but actually like, I don't know. It's, I'm on a, on a bit of a journey just because of this Mappa quiz. 

Rohit: Huh 

Cyan: I gave it very little information. 

Josh: Yeah. 

Cyan: And, do you want me to read it? 

Josh: If you're open to it. 

Cyan: Yeah. You balance energy and caution. You bring strong energy, then slow down to think. Under pressure you pause to avoid mistakes and choose measured action. You have deliberate pacing. You pause often to organize thoughts and protect accuracy before moving forward. Expressive drive, you use strong emphasis to engage people to keep attention on key points. You modulate your voice sharply to emphasize ideas and steer focus as you go. Like, yeah.

Immad: From 30 seconds. That's crazy. 

Cyan: And I didn't, I think I gave it like, I'm a VC, I'm a mom. I'm like… Very little. 'cause I wanted to see what would happen if I just gave it, and it, this is pretty spot on. 

Rohit: What, you know, what's interesting is that's very different from what I said. So it's not just putting out like dumb universal platitudes, like, you know.

Cyan: Yeah, yeah.

Rohit: You’re a nice person. 

Cyan: Like, I was like, I'm a VC. I mean, everything, I'm going through the list here. These is, spot on, on everything. You dislike rigid rules. Yeah. And heavy processes. Yeah. I hate them. You may overlook details and documentation.

Immad: Maybe you’re too easy to figure out, Cyan.

Cyan: I dunno, this actually gives me, like, it worries me that I'm so easy to figure out

Immad: In just the 30 seconds!

Rohit: Maybe I'm not charming. What if it’s actually right? 

Rohit: But so like we, we've looked at tools like this for screening founders and I think it's, I don't know. I never want someone sitting in that seat and I'm like not listening to them because the app is telling me like, I wanna give people the benefit that I don't, I don't know. 

Josh: That's your choice to use if you want.

Rohit: It’s, it’s just so complicated to say like, I'm gonna screen somebody on this thing and -

Cyan: You may discover that you'll, you would pick a candidate that you wouldn't have. 

Rohit: Yeah, I guess so. I'm always assuming the negative result here. 

Cyan: Yeah

Josh: You're investing, right? 

Rohit: Yeah. Yeah. 

Charles: He's like, to be clear -

Rohit: I'm talking myself out of this thing.

Josh: Oh gosh. 

Josh: All right. 

Charles: All right.

Josh: Turn it around. 

Immad: Are we gonna have lunch now?

Josh: Uh, one more pitch before lunch. But we got snacks. 

Immad: Maybe I should have snacks. My stomach was gargling.

Sarah walked out of the pitch room with a 150k commitment from Immad, 100k commitment from Rohit, and Cyan interested in taking the round.

When we come back, diligence. And our old friend, valuation returns. She’s not gonna double it in two months ... is she?

BREAK

Welcome back. A week after the pitch, Sarah and Rohit jumped on a diligence call.

Sarah: Hi. 

Rohit: How are you?

Sarah: Hi Rohit. How are you?

Rohit: Where are you right now? 

Sarah: I'm in Brazil. So great to see you. 

Rohit: Yeah, good to see you again. Just sort of digging in a little further, like I've sent it to a few people and we're all kind of like, everyone's impressed by the demo. But the question is, well, where do we go from there? Because I think the insights are great, but what do I do with them? If I could find somebody who could actually work with me, that would be amazing. 'cause I'm a difficult human being. 

Sarah: I love that you say that about yourself because it's setting the expectations, but I don't really buy it. You, you're gonna have to sell me harder on that one. 

Rohit: Ask my kids, they'll tell you I'm difficult. It was sort of interesting sort of brainstorming other markets or places this could be used. I thought parenting was sort of interesting. A quiz that would help me sort of approach my kids in a more constructive manner instead of having to figure this out constantly. You know, that's interesting

Sarah: This is something that I would love to hear your take on because that's one thing that I'm still kind of like debating internally. We have two ways to approach the future of Mappa. We've been kind of dating both of them at this point. but I do have to decide who we are gonna marry in the next couple of months. 

Rohit: I think you're making so much money on recruiting. It's hard to step away from that. I think like eventually you'll start getting people knocking on your door. Like, Hey, can I use this for X purpose? And you're like, well, yeah, give us a few weeks to figure out how to do that. But sure. But dating's an easy lift. I think you're right there. 

Sarah: Yeah. I agree with you, and I'm excited as well about like your slightly cynical take and I agree with you because like sometimes we get into the hype of innovating and creating technology, And we only look at the upside and I, I, I'm certain about the huge upside that we have. But you have to also understand the responsibilities of building something like that and what that can be used for. 

Rohit: Yeah. And look, I, I appreciate how, how thoughtful your team has been about deploying technology like this, because, you know, the first question anybody asks is like, how would this be used for evil? You know. That's, that's kind of where we wanna align is mission driven companies that.. probably a mission we like. So. So just kind of remind me, where are you on your round?

Sarah: So, we closed on 3.4 million dollars and we opened small extension of 1.6 to close the 5 million for the pitch exclusively. 

Rohit: Okay. 

Sarah: We are aiming to have 48 million post money valuation cap. 

Rohit: You're going from 15 to 48? 

Sarah: Yes…

Rohit: That's tough dude. That’s tough.

Sarah: Hear, hear me out. The only reason I raised at 15 was because it was my first institutional round. I knew it would be the hardest one to actually sell. I don't have a huge extensive network in, in the US and I knew I couldn't raise on a pitch deck. I needed to show traction before even trying to go for venture capital. So that's what we did. We built a business from the ground up, bootstrapped it ourselves to over $2.5 million in annualized revenue. Raised an institutional round at 15. Now we are raising at 48 just because in less than six months, Rohit, we are gonna be raising a series A at at least 60. This means that we are gonna be adding to your investment over $20 million in less than six months. 

Rohit: But so like, let's look at it this way. 15, 48, 60, right? This is the one in the middle. Like I agree. 15 is probably low. 48 might be a little high. Uh, yeah, I mean that, that definitely changes my thinking a little bit, Um

Sarah: How much were you thinking? 

Rohit: I tend to be very, very understanding of where founders are coming from, but that sort of jump is a little reason for pause. But, uh, just transparently, like you're gonna scare off a lot of investors with that valuation. Like that's like an A round kind of valuation. 

Sarah: I get that. Like, we are not, and and here's the thing, but 

Rohit: like, look, we are not you, you have to, you have to decide this is what it is and that's it. And if you scare 'em off, you scare 'em off. Whatever. That’s their problem.

Sarah: Yeah. That's, and I think, I think that's where I am at this point, Rohit. Like we are not 

Rohit: mm-hmm. 

Sarah: We are not seeking investors. We are seeking individuals that we believe in and that we know can add value. And the reason why I was excited about our call is that I think you are one of those individuals, and that's the only reason why I can tell you with confidence like, if the valuation is a problem, we are gonna get to a point in which it's not, and if this is not something that we can get done in terms of numbers, we'll still work together because I wanna work with you. 

Rohit: Happy to look at it and see if it's, if it, we can make the math work. If there's a deal to be had, then let's do it. Um, and what's your timeline?

Sarah: Um, so our timeline, it's actually by the end of September. 

Rohit: Okay. 

Sarah: Yeah, so I'd say like four and a half weeks. 

Rohit: That works for us. If I can't come to a decision by then, it's, that's a decision too. 

Sarah: I agree. 

Rohit: Enjoy the rest of evening. Um, we'll, we'll catch up week or so 

Sarah: for sure. Yeah. Um, please lemme know if there is anything I also can help. In the meantime. Excited for this. Speak, speak soon.

Josh: I can't believe she said 48 million. 

Lisa: What the crap. 

Josh: I had no idea she was gonna say that. 

Lisa: I guess we should have asked her that valuation before bringing her on. 

Josh: Well, I mean, like the VC’s said she's not gonna double it. She's gonna triple it. 

Lisa: Okay. 

Josh: Okay. So she had the call with Rohit.

Lisa: Mm-hmm. 

Josh: She still has her call with Cyan coming up and Immad, I feel like we should tell her like, Hey, maybe don't say that $48 million valuation. 

Lisa: Yeah. Rohit was definitely turned off by that, you could tell, but I think that this might actually be a power move on Sarah's part. 

Josh: It's something…

Lisa: Like, I know sometimes we think founders just don't understand the dynamics of fundraising and we like to try to help coach them, but I don't think that's what's happening here.

Josh: Something significant needs to have happened in the business to justify that kind of valuation jump. 

Lisa: I agree. And if I was investing in this round, I would say, let's get it down. 

Josh: Yeah. I think it has to land somewhere between 20 and 30, or it's not getting done with the VCs on our show anyway. 

Lisa: Yeah. There's definitely a danger of losing people completely. But I also think that if Sarah was a tech bro, she could put a number out like that and people would be more accepting of it. 

Josh: Yeah. But maybe if she hadn't raised anything before. But because you just raised a round at 15 million, you're planting that like flag in the ground. That's like we were worth 15 million 2 months ago. 

Lisa: Okay, but was she worth 15 million 2 months ago or did you get in on a good deal? 

Josh: I mean, I think we got a good deal. 

Lisa: Yeah. 

Josh: But 48 million is a bad deal. 

Lisa: This is what makes me think Sarah is one of those like rockstar female founders, because she's like not afraid to put this out there. She knows what she wants and she's going after it 

Josh: As opposed to some female founders on the show that we've had in the past who've discounted themselves? 

Lisa: Yes. 

Josh: Okay. Yeah. 

Josh: But maybe too far in the other direction. 

Lisa: She's overcorrected. 

Josh: Well, we'll see how it all plays out. She's gotta have that call with Cyan’s team and she's got a call with Immad and we'll see what happens in the Season Finale. 

No offer to invest in Mappa is being made to the listening audience on today’s show. But you can become an LP in our fund. Fund I is closed, and we’re making our last few investments on this season of the show, but in Q1 of next year, we’re doing our first close on Fund II. [air horns] To learn more, check out our brand new website for the fund at thepitch.fund.

Next week on The Pitch… the cofounder of Blaze pizza pitches his sequel. Another bread-like circle, the smaller brother. The bagel.


Brad: Our product is not created for gluten-free people. It's created for everyone

David: And probably if I didn't tell you it was gluten-free, you would have no idea.

Dawn: It’s great bread.

That’s next week! Subscribe to season 14 on your favorite podcast player so you don’t miss future episodes. You can watch full length versions of every pitch over on our Patreon.

And if you’re a founder and you want to be on the next season of the pitch, applications for season 15 are now open! Go to pitch.show/apply

We’ll see you next Wednesday, in the PITCH ROOM.

–

This episode was made by me, Josh Muccio, Lisa Muccio, Anna Ladd, and Enoch Kim. With deal sourcing by Peter Liu, John Alvarez, and Phoebe Sun.

Music in this episode is by The Muse Maker, Eagle Dragonballs, Boxwood Orchestra, White Flowers, Imagined Nostalgia, Graham Barton, Shaky Faces, Soul City, and finally Peter Jean and The Runaway Queen.

Thanks to Kevin Moore at Serac Ventures and Tony Cueva Bravo, for introducing us to Mappa. 

The Pitch is made in partnership with the Vox Media Podcast Network.