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GTM: How Esper Is Building the Operating System for Government Policy | Maleka Momand

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Who we sat down with

Maleka Momand, co-founder and CEO of Esper, joins Sophie Buonassisi on GTMnow to break down what it actually takes to build and sell software to government. Esper is the operating system for government policy, serving as the system of record for the regulation and internal policy that shapes daily life, from NYPD procedures to nurse practitioner licensing in rural Tennessee.

Maleka shares hard-won lessons from 8 years in GovTech: why winning trust matters more than winning business, why professional services are a moat (not a cost center), and how Esper turns slow, paper-based policy processes into live digital workflows. She also covers the DOGE effect across red and blue states, why enterprise SaaS still has defensible moats in the age of AI, and her advice to founders entering regulated markets.

Whether you’re a founder, GTM leader, or operator selling into complex, slow-moving markets, this conversation is packed with practical playbooks on trust, go-to-market, and building durable enterprise software.

Episode highlights

0:00 – Intro

0:44 – Two types of government policy (regulation vs internal)

2:06 – The NYPD 3,000-page policy problem

3:23 – Digitizing a paper-based, 20-person workflow

4:12 – Why policy is infrastructure

5:23 – Real impact: Tennessee healthcare & Arkansas hunting licenses

7:45 – Esper’s ideal customer: complexity, catalyst, volume

8:18 – Going to market in GovTech (and why it’s slow)

10:16 – Advice for founders entering GovTech: win trust first

11:27 – Why professional services are a moat

12:38 – In-house vs third-party services

13:49 – What DOGE actually looks like on the ground

15:11 – Is DOGE a tailwind for Esper?

16:36 – The new funding round & enterprise SaaS in the age of AI

19:13 – From VC to founder: why Maleka made the shift

22:10 – Advice for founders: read fiction, not productivity books

24:14 – AI, data quality, and the problem with vibe coding

26:43 – How Esper uses AI internally (meet “Poly”)

27:27 – Building a high-agency culture while scaling

29:00 – Closing thoughts

Key takeaways

1. Policy is infrastructure.
Business licenses, traffic tickets, your driver’s license: all of it is governed by upstream policy. It’s the business logic that fuels every GovTech workflow. Get the policy layer right and everything downstream works.

2. Your ICP can be a pattern, rather than a vertical.
Rather than say “we only serve health agencies,” Esper uses buying signals: complexity, catalyst, and volume – heavy regulation, a change agent tired of the status quo, and a lot of work to do. That pattern wins across health, public safety, and licensing alike.

3. Win trust before you win business.
Governments are looking for reasons not to trust a new vendor: a failed purchase becomes a headline and someone gets voted out. Maleka’s playbook to buy trust: an advisory board of respected officials, low-cost pilots for logos and case studies, sometimes lobbyists. Expect three years before you’re really in.

4. Don’t underestimate professional services.
Government expects high-touch service. Esper sent a team to Topeka to train 100 people in one room. Services drive revenue, fight churn, and prove you’re invested, so the software doesn’t become shelfware.

5. Keep services in-house, and forecast headcount backward.
Eight years in, Esper still doesn’t outsource services, because the customer feedback loop is too valuable to lose. A grumble in a training is exactly what product needs to hear. They run the math the other way: projects, then people-hours, then headcount, or the team balloons.

6. Enterprise SaaS’ moat is context (and distribution).
Through the “SaaSpocalypse” noise, Maleka has found defensibility in the age of AI comes from 10+ years of clean compounding data, exceptional services, and quality integrations.

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