Calificadas: When Communication Becomes a Competitive Advantage

In a corporate environment where soft skills are often treated as an add-on rather than a metric, Calificadas decided to step in where few were looking.

In a home where entrepreneurship never sleeps, María Constanza “Costi” Gómez is building a company with her mom and siblings. They work together every day. They disagree, bring out the best in each other, and make strategic decisions around the same family table.

“It’s beautiful and intense,” Costi says about working with her mom as a co-founder. “We can tell each other everything, through the good times and the bad.”

From Corrientes to Mexico, that family dynamic gave rise to an AI-powered platform that aims to turn communication, long considered a “soft” skill, into metrics, training, and a competitive advantage for companies across the region.

In this conversation, Costi talks about scaling from Argentina’s interior to markets like Mexico, overcoming initial resistance to a gender-focused approach, and using technology to measure what was once invisible.

How did you get into entrepreneurship?

I got into it alongside my business partner, who is also my mom. Entrepreneurship has been part of my life since I was very young. We used to sew clothes for Barbie dolls together, and I sold them at school. It was always about finding something I enjoyed and figuring out how to turn it into something that could generate income.

Calificadas is the evolution of the first venture we started together: a communications center for girls. We realized that women had particular communication needs in the workplace, and we wanted to address them early on.

That project eventually came to an end. I entered the corporate world, and later we went back to training communication skills, but in person. Then we realized something important: our time was the limiting factor.

Technology could break through that limit. That’s where the first major strategic shift came in: moving from in-person workshops to a scalable digital platform.

What is Calificadas today, and what role does AI play?

Calificadas is an artificial intelligence platform focused on one of the most underestimated areas of corporate life: communication.

Our focus is B2B. We work with companies that understand communication skills aren’t an add-on, but a competitive advantage. Although anyone can use the app, the real impact comes when organizations make communication part of their leadership strategy.

Artificial intelligence is the product’s infrastructure. Starting with the initial assessment, the platform analyzes voice patterns, message structure, and body language to turn what was traditionally subjective into concrete metrics.

From there, it generates a personalized training plan and measures progress in real time through practice rooms where users rehearse and receive ongoing feedback. Rather than simply teaching people to communicate, Calificadas turns communication into a measurable, scalable system.

How do you measure real impact?

We measure it on three levels.

1. Objective performance: scores for intonation, pace, clarity, and message construction.
2. How the person feels. You can be good at communicating, but if you don’t feel confident, it has an impact.
3. How that improvement affects the company and workplace outcomes. We’ve seen it affect not only work, but also people’s family and social lives.

What resistance did you encounter when you first positioned Calificadas as a platform for women?

It was a huge challenge, not just commercially but culturally as well.

At first, we were a platform exclusively for women because we started from a concrete reality: women face specific challenges in the workplace, especially around communication, leadership, and visibility.

But we constantly had to justify our existence—as if talking about women meant talking about a niche. When in reality, we were talking about half the population.

Many companies asked whether we were “too specific” or leaving out part of the market. We also faced a practical reality: budgets for women’s leadership tend to be smaller and more restricted. That forced us to rethink our positioning.

We realized the problem wasn’t just about women, but about how communication skills are developed in corporate environments in general. We decided to expand the platform to all genders without losing sight of our roots.

That process taught us something important: when you work on gender issues, the market often isn’t yet ready to see them as a strategic investment, but rather as an add-on program.

And we wanted communication to be seen as infrastructure, not a complementary initiative.

Who is Calificadas’ ideal customer today, and what was it like building that market from Corrientes to Mexico?

After starting as B2C, we realized that the real impact lay within organizations. Today, our focus is B2B.

Our ideal customers are large companies that are open to working with startups and understand that communication skills aren’t secondary, but strategic. They see communication as part of leadership and performance, not an “extra.”

We work with companies such as Alsea and Manpower Group, and we’re piloting with Coca-Cola FEMSA. These are organizations that invest in development because they understand that leadership doesn’t happen by itself.

Building that market from Corrientes was a challenge. We’re Argentine, and we started in a region where the startup ecosystem is still taking shape. From the outset, we knew we had to look to where the opportunities were. Mexico was key.

We applied to 500 Latam, secured investment, and started building our network from there. Breaking into the market wasn’t easy, but it was a strategic decision. Mexico has a more mature corporate ecosystem, and companies are more willing to invest in innovation and development.

That combination of receptive corporate customers and an intentionally built network allowed Calificadas to scale beyond its place of origin.

What does it really mean for a Latin American startup to appear in outlets like Nasdaq or TechCrunch?

It changes everything and, at the same time, nothing. Day to day, you keep working as usual. The product doesn’t improve because it’s featured in an article, and customers don’t close themselves. Operations stay the same.

But strategically, it makes a big difference. It gives you credibility. In markets like Mexico or the United States, where you’re often “just another Argentine startup,” that kind of validation serves as a signal. It opens doors, speeds up conversations, and reduces friction with corporations and investors.

It also has an internal impact. It lets you look back and take stock of what you’ve built. The team sees that its work is resonating beyond the local market.

And, more importantly, it connects you with the global ecosystem. Conversations start coming in that didn’t exist before. People who didn’t know you existed are now reaching out.

It’s not a finish line, but it is an accelerator.

What concrete impact would you like Calificadas to have on people’s lives?

I’d like people to say it changed the way they see themselves.

We’ve seen users who, after training with the platform, feel confident enough to speak up in meetings where they used to stay silent. People who gain the confidence to present a project, negotiate a salary, or step into a leadership role.

In some cases, this improvement in communication directly leads to promotions or new job opportunities. In others, it even affects their personal lives: they feel clearer, more confident, and better able to express what they think.

We know that communication is the foundation of everything. Even in an era dominated by artificial intelligence, we always come back to the human element. We want Calificadas to be the tool that allows you to develop this skill consciously, measurably, and strategically. It shouldn’t depend on luck or natural charisma, but on training.

If we can help more people feel capable of stepping into spaces they once avoided, then for us, that’s real transformation.

When soft skills become measurable

For years, soft skills were treated as an add-on. Calificadas decided to treat them as infrastructure.

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Interview by Eduardo Hernández is Head of Startup Avenue at Volcano Summit and a Partner at Leapstart, where he leads initiatives to strengthen startups, connect ecosystems, and accelerate companies with regional growth potential. He is a former entrepreneur in the insurance industry and has actively participated in the ecosystem through initiatives such as Startup Weekend, Emprendedores Anónimos, Hackers/Founders, and Magma Partners.

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