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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.
Follow Maleka Momand
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malekamomand
- X (Twitter): @MalekaMomand
- Esper’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/esper-regulatory-technologies
- Esper’s website: https://esper.com
Follow Sophie Buonassisi (Host)
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/sophiebuona
- Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com
Follow GTMnow
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GTM 193 Episode Transcript
00:00 – 00:02
Sophie Buonassisi: Malika. Hi. Welcome to GTM now.
00:02 – 00:03
Maleka Momand: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
00:03 – 00:10
Sophie Buonassisi: Absolutely. It’s great to have you here. And for anyone unfamiliar with Asper. Give us a little bit of context to what Asper is, what you’re building.
00:10 – 00:25
Maleka Momand: Asper is an operating system for government policy. We work with government agencies across the US, to serve as their source of truth and their system of record for all of the regulation and policy that impacts our daily lives.
00:25 – 00:44
Sophie Buonassisi: Excellent. And it’s funny because we’ve turned so many things into software marketing, sales, finance, all the different functions and policy selling impacts every single country. But it’s one of the things that has been probably slowest to be transformed. So I’m curious, like in a government agency, like what does policy actually look like before it’s transformed at least.
00:44 – 01:09
Maleka Momand: There is sort of two types of policies. One is citizen facing. So that’s regulation. And I’m guessing most of the listeners to this podcast, have heard of regulation or interacted with it in some way, whether you’re, you know, interacting with local zoning regulations or trying to open a business or dealing with the SEC, you name it, regulation is more public facing and impacts what we can and can’t do.
01:09 – 01:35
Maleka Momand: There’s also internal facing policy in a government agency, which is equally important. This is the policy that governs, you know, what government employees, and how they, how they operate every single day. So it’s the policies and procedures that the NYPD police officers follow, or it’s, you know, the policies that a caseworker in Louisiana needs to make sure they abide by when they’re investigating a social welfare case.
01:35 – 01:59
Maleka Momand: Both of these are really important. And they have different impacts on how we live. But before espera, really, even ten years ago, regulation and policy was a very paper driven and manual process. The process of developing policy was a very additive, and sort of labor intensive process where they’re like actually passing around manila folders, in a government agency.
01:59 – 02:06
Maleka Momand: Yeah. To develop this policy and ultimately syndicate it out to the people that need to abide by it.
02:06 – 02:14
Sophie Buonassisi: And you work with the NYPD, but they’ve got this 3000 page document, I believe that needs constant updating. So before they were just passing around the pages.
02:14 – 02:36
Maleka Momand: And yeah, it was, they had like actual books that would sit in every single police car. And so what would happen is you’d have like one person driving to the scene and another person like flipping through the book being like, okay, okay, what is the policy on this? Yeah. And anytime they made an update to the policy, they would have to go to the each of the books and like, tape over with the new version of the policy.
02:36 – 02:59
Maleka Momand: So extremely manual. But if you like zoom out. The bigger issue there is like it was very hard to have, consistent enforcement and, sort of compliance with the policy. So, you know, maybe, a police officer in Manhattan was following a version of a policy from 2015, but someone in Brooklyn was doing something from 2022. And so it’s this inconsistent delivery of service to citizens.
02:59 – 03:08
Maleka Momand: And it also exposes, you know, government agencies to a fair amount of risk if they don’t have all of their employees literally on the same page about what they need to be doing.
03:08 – 03:23
Sophie Buonassisi: I can imagine and you said that I’ve heard you say, I believe that one policy has an average of about 20 people collaborating on it. Which is a tremendous amount of people. And so how is that kind of change happening amongst so many different people.
03:23 – 03:43
Maleka Momand: So we’re like I said, this would all be happening in email, a folder where you’d have like a lawyer review it and then they’d, you know, actually physically sign off on it and then send it to someone else’s desk, etc., etc.. And so it’s a very slow process, but also a lot of institutional knowledge and decision making rationale wasn’t captured in that paper based process in Esper.
03:43 – 04:02
Maleka Momand: You know, the first thing that we did when we started the company was, you know, build out a digital workflow where they’re actually collaborating on these documents live and then sending them around for review across lawyers, subject matter experts, people in the field to get their input, and then ultimately, you know, develop the final product and then publish it digitally.
04:02 – 04:12
Maleka Momand: So it’s like, like many enterprise SaaS companies, the first part of building the company was actually taking what the manual workflow was and then creating a digital process for it.
04:12 – 04:17
Sophie Buonassisi: And something that I’ve heard you say is a policies infrastructure. What do you mean by that.
04:18 – 04:50
Maleka Momand: Policy is, is like a blueprint for all of the little rules that we have that govern how we, how we live and work. What I mean by that is if you want to, you know, apply for a business license or, you know, get certain benefits or contest, a traffic violation, whatever it might be. Policy is sort of the upstream blueprint that creates like a rules engine for what you can and can’t do in any of those given scenarios.
04:50 – 05:17
Maleka Momand: So if you think about the the government functions of permitting and licensing, licensing enforcement, the lady at the DMV who gives you your actual driver’s license, all of those workflows are governed by regulation and policy. And so it’s it’s like this, sort of business logic that fuels all of these different sort of solutions in GovTech and in government generally.
05:17 – 05:23
Sophie Buonassisi: Let’s take an example. You name the couple there, but something that people would tangibly feel like their day to day.
05:23 – 05:44
Maleka Momand: Yeah. Well I’ll give a couple during Covid. One of our customers is the state of Tennessee. And the Tennessee Department of Health was really trying to get improved access to health care in rural areas. And what I mean by that is like in Nashville and in Memphis, they have doctors and they have hospitals. But in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, not so much, right?
05:44 – 06:14
Maleka Momand: They more have nurse practitioners or nurses assistants, physicians assistants, etc. but they were having a shortage of those nurse practitioners, and they needed to make sure that people, you know, in more rural areas could have access to those in peace. And so what they did is they went inside of Asper and dramatically changed the licensing requirements for nurse practitioners to sort of reduce the barriers to entry so that Tennessee could have more nurse practitioners and thus have more access to health care in rural areas.
06:14 – 06:36
Maleka Momand: So that was really matter during Covid, when, you know, there was a, a big and dramatic shortage in health care workers and that impact was felt in Tennessee. So that’s one example. Another example might be my home state of Arkansas. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, like we truly work with all types of agencies because all of them have regulation and policy.
06:36 – 07:04
Maleka Momand: They wanted to change how their regulations, for out-of-state hunters worked. So basically give more, sort of credits to the local hunters in Arkansas and then sort of charge more to the out-of-state ones. And the way that they changed their regulations actually reflects that. So people in Arkansas have an easier time getting game tags. It’s a little bit more pricey for out-of-state, but it also because it’s pricier for the out-of-state hunters.
07:04 – 07:24
Maleka Momand: There’s way more, economic vitality and growth contributed to the state of Arkansas. So the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is like now a revenue generating agency. Yeah. So all types of different examples where agencies are using our software to make, manage and then systematically update their regulations to reflect what they want to have happen in their state.
07:24 – 07:39
Maleka Momand: It’s an outcome driven system. So whether that’s increasing health care access in rural areas or driving more economic growth in Arkansas. These are all things that are achievable because they’re actually using our software to implement those changes.
07:39 – 07:45
Sophie Buonassisi: That’s incredible. I mean, you can see the impact across so many different use cases and and areas to.
07:45 – 08:02
Maleka Momand: It can be overwhelming honestly. You know, sometimes when we meet with investors, they’re like, Ray, what part of the market are you targeting? And they really want us to say we only work with health agencies or we only work with fish and game agencies. But the reality is, you know, Asper wins when there’s, a catalyst complexity and volume.
08:02 – 08:18
Maleka Momand: We call it kV. We like really complex agencies with large amounts of regulation and policy. We like catalyst and change agents and government that are, you know, tired of the status quo and want to do something different in volume is like they have a lot of work to do, and they want to do it inside of Asper.
08:18 – 08:32
Sophie Buonassisi: That’s super, super fascinating. And I mean, GovTech is an interesting area unto itself. What has it been like going to market with GovTech, which is we’re known to be one of kind of the slower moving entities to be able to sell to you.
08:32 – 08:53
Maleka Momand: Well, I know where to start here. So started the company in 2018 and that was just a whole different enchilada, honestly. Meaning that, you know, we would go and pitch government agencies and we would explain that we were cloud based and they would say, what does that mean? And they’d ask if we were mainframe. And I was like, what does that mean?
08:53 – 09:15
Maleka Momand: It was like, totally, you know, not not understanding. But I think that GovTech in general has caught up or the adoption curve is getting there. Governments are traditionally slower on the adoption curve because they’re fairly risk averse if they, you know, spend a lot of money on a software program that doesn’t work, there is going to be a headline about it, and someone’s going to get voted out of office, right.
09:15 – 09:33
Maleka Momand: Or they’re going to be consequences. Whereas if in the private sector, we spend a lot of money on a software and doesn’t work out, really cut our losses and we move on, but there’s probably not going to be a headline about it. Yeah. So there’s a lot of risk aversion. And then also the barriers to entry for getting started in government are quite high.
09:33 – 09:55
Maleka Momand: Procurement hurdles and sales cycles are very long. In order to do business with the government, you often need to get, like an inordinate amount of security and, you know, different audits and compliance certifications. So what that means for incumbents is they have a pretty protected mode, because once you’re in, it’s very sticky and hard to displace.
09:55 – 10:16
Maleka Momand: But for new entrants into the govtech space, it’s expensive. And time consuming, and you have to have patient capital behind you. That’s okay. That that recognizes it’s going to be, you know, three years probably before you really get your foot in the door and start to prove value in the government space because it just takes a while.
10:16 – 10:21
Sophie Buonassisi: Any advice to anyone entering maybe a couple steps behind you into the govtech space.
10:21 – 11:03
Maleka Momand: Yeah I think the there are two things that really stand out to me. One is really analyze how you can win trust faster. I’m not saying win business. I’m saying win trust because governments are so risk averse. They’re looking for reasons not to trust you. And you need to give them a lot of reasons to trust you and show that you’re a solid, qualified vendor, whether that’s creating an advisory board with, government officials or sort of influencers that are highly regarded in the government space, whether that’s doing low cost pilots to get some logos on your website and some credible case studies.
11:03 – 11:27
Maleka Momand: Those are just a few examples. Sometimes hiring lobbyists can be a really good way to, you know, buy some trust, when you’re in your entrant into the space. But that’s sort of one theme is you’ve got to earn trust with government agencies, to overcome that, like initial risk aversion. The second is don’t underestimate the power of professional services and implementation.
11:27 – 11:45
Maleka Momand: And this was a big lesson for me. Because I was coming from Silicon Valley where, you know, you, like, give someone their login and they’re off to the races and, you know, kind of never talk to them again. Unless you want some feedback on a new product you’re building. But in government, they expect a, certain level and quality of professional services.
11:45 – 11:55
Maleka Momand: I mean, we have a, you know, part of our team right now in Topeka, Kansas that is truly leading a live training with 100 people in a room. Walking them through how to use the software.
11:55 – 11:56
Sophie Buonassisi: So show me a picture.
11:56 – 12:20
Maleka Momand: I mean, I love it. It’s kind of unique to the govtech space. But services can be a great revenue driver for GovTech companies as well. But it also protects against, you know, retention or churn, challenges and ultimately goes back to winning trust. If you make the time to show up in Topeka, Kansas or Baton Rouge, Louisiana, you’re showing that you really care and you’re invested in the partnership.
12:20 – 12:38
Maleka Momand: It’s not that it’s just going to be software that you toss to them and it becomes shelf wear. So building trust and and second really investing in a strong professional services motion so that you can really screw the software in and you know, have less fear about it turning from from week adoption a year from now.
12:38 – 12:44
Sophie Buonassisi: And do you have any advice around building out that professional service internally versus partnering with a third party?
12:44 – 13:10
Maleka Momand: I really wouldn’t partner with a third party, early on. I mean, we’re eight years in and we still don’t have third party partnerships for services because that feedback loop from the customer is so important. And if you outsource it too soon, I think you just risk not hearing, you know, someone grumble about something in a training that you take back to the product team and, you know, could do better.
13:10 – 13:34
Maleka Momand: Yeah. So I think try and keep as much as you can. In-house professional services is hard because, you know, it is, people heavy and thus capital heavy operations inside of a company. So I think building internal discipline around okay, you know, we forecast this number of projects. That means we roughly need this number of people hours. And that means you sort of back into your hiring or headcount for that team.
13:34 – 13:49
Maleka Momand: Yeah, that’s really important to get right. Otherwise professional services teams can can really like expand quickly. So being super mindful of the how how you’re sort of backing into the number of headcount there is is key.
13:49 – 14:03
Sophie Buonassisi: Interesting okay. Super helpful advice. And one of the the big kind of recent stories or headlines around government is dojo. And you’ve been building in governments with governments for about eight years now. What are you seeing on the ground in regards to dojo.
14:03 – 14:06
Maleka Momand: Without being spicy I’m seeing a lot of we.
14:06 – 14:08
Sophie Buonassisi: We welcome face on GTM now.
14:08 – 14:10
Maleka Momand: I’m seeing a lot of committees.
14:10 – 14:10
Sophie Buonassisi: Okay.
14:10 – 14:37
Maleka Momand: And whenever I see a committee in government, like I have, one of my eyebrows raises because it’s usually where ideas go to die is in committee. So there are versions of dojo being, stood up across all states, red and blue. And I think the intention is there and, it’s more about actually putting resources behind it and holding the committees and the resources accountable.
14:37 – 15:01
Maleka Momand: Otherwise it becomes a headline. But there’s really no story, or results. You know, a year from now. So I guess my, my take would be I would love to get her read out six months, a year from now to see what actually does accomplished. I mean, at the federal level, I think there was some questions raised about how much the dojo themselves that we didn’t we weren’t able to accomplish what we wanted to do.
15:01 – 15:11
Maleka Momand: And that’s at the federal level with a ton of support, right. At the state level. Are we going to see actual outcomes from that? I’m not sure yet. A lot of committees right now, I want to see more action.
15:11 – 15:22
Sophie Buonassisi: More action. You mentioned Dojo and Esper run across both blue and red state. Is dojo a tailwind for Esper or what is that relationship like?
15:22 – 15:47
Maleka Momand: I think it’s a tailwind. It’s been a nice opportunity to sort of resurface a lot of older work that we’ve done, because when we started Esper in 2018, really the the driving narrative was like government efficiency and, regulatory reform. And as we’ve grown our sort of mission and the narrative has changed, to, you know, talk about outcomes and consistent delivery of service to citizens like the NYPD examples I talked about.
15:47 – 16:12
Maleka Momand: But I think it’s a tailwind for us because we get to go into states like new Jersey or Louisiana and say, hey, here’s case studies that we’ve done for the past five years in Iowa and Montana and in Tennessee and give like real concrete proof points of, here’s how they, you know, cleaned up regulation, made the sort of regulatory environment less burdensome for, for businesses and citizens, all of that.
16:12 – 16:22
Maleka Momand: So I think tailwind maybe I feel like a little bit grumbly that, I mean, we’ve been doing this for eight years and it’s finally catching on, but I guess that’s the government adoption curve.
16:22 – 16:35
Sophie Buonassisi: I’m sure it isn’t. And it’s often how it goes in every market. But before, I was a little bit ahead of the curve. And then typically the market catches up because you’re there and because you’ve established a lot of relationships and you can create quite, quite a lot of environmental adoption.
16:35 – 16:36
Maleka Momand: Definitely.
16:36 – 16:54
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Fantastic. And I mean, you can see that in terms of outcomes. You recently announced a new round of fundraising. Congratulations. Thank you. I’d love to hear a little bit more, around the announcement, just for listeners unfamiliar with it. And then what the future for aspera looks like. I’m sure you’re hiring across a bunch of roles, too.
16:54 – 17:02
Maleka Momand: Yeah, we’re off off air. We were talking about the hate that enterprise SAS is getting right now, or the doubts swimming around enterprise, SAS.
17:02 – 17:04
Sophie Buonassisi: SAS, Pocalypse.
17:04 – 17:29
Maleka Momand: All of the things, and I think that the funding round is a nice, again, like validation marker. The enterprise SAS isn’t going anywhere. And actually a lot of enterprise SAS companies have, huge defensible moats if they use them correctly. And so the funding round is for us to use them correctly. What I mean by that is I think enterprise SAS defense ability in the age of AI is, largely around context.
17:29 – 17:53
Maleka Momand: And, you know, ten plus years of, compounding data that’s been well organized and is now ready to deploy. It’s around exceptional services, which I think become more valuable, in, in the age of AI. And then I also think it’s around the quality and the ability of the company to do integrations with other sort of vendors and, sort of partners in the tech stack of their, of their customer.
17:53 – 18:13
Maleka Momand: So context and data, integrations, services, all of that really matters. But I think the problem for a lot of enterprise SaaS companies is, you know, they’ve been around for ten years, maybe they’re a little tired, and now they’re like, oh my God, we have to completely pivot and change again. Yeah, I don’t think Esper is pivoting by any means.
18:13 – 18:33
Maleka Momand: But really what we’re doing is doubling down internally on our usage of AI tooling, and then leveling up, how we do expert services for our customers, and the quality of integrations and using our data correctly for our customers. So the funding round is really driving that, right? And yes, we are hiring on every team right now.
18:33 – 19:02
Maleka Momand: And the the company is eight years old, but it also feels like we’re just getting started. There’s so much fresh momentum from the sort of Doge tailwinds. The funding rounds, government interest in, more modern technology. And, I think that a lot of GovTech companies that have been around for our time are also seeing like a renaissance in, in governments, willingness and readiness to buy.
19:02 – 19:10
Sophie Buonassisi: I mean, that’s fantastic. We’re super happy for you and all the momentum. And it’s been incredible to see your growth over the years and excited to see what happens now with the new funding.
19:10 – 19:13
Maleka Momand: Let’s go. Yeah. Come back in a year and I’ll tell you all exactly.
19:13 – 19:23
Sophie Buonassisi: We’ll sit down here again. We’ll have our drinks ready and and catch up on it. But you know, your background is that on the venture capital side yourself. What inspired the shift?
19:23 – 19:46
Maleka Momand: Well, the year was like 2015, 2016. And I mean, the entrepreneurial energy in San Francisco was incredible. Like, you know, I, I was like fresh out of Arkansas and moved to the Bay area, started working with Joe Lonsdale at eight VC and was just so inspired by all of the portfolio companies that I got to interact with and, meet with the founders, learn about their challenges and obstacles.
19:46 – 20:15
Maleka Momand: And at the time and still today, so many portfolio companies are operating in highly regulated spaces where the regulations, are outdated and just not matching the needs and wants of the consumer and the capabilities of technology. And so time and time again in the Bay area, I would just meet with founders that were like, we’re facing regulatory barriers to entry from, you know, the the Federal Housing Authority or the SEC or whatever you name it.
20:15 – 20:37
Maleka Momand: And that really sparked my interest in like, how does all this regulation and policy really work? Governments appear to be producing thousands of regulations and policies every year. What operating system exists? And we started digging in and realized that actually there is no operating system. It’s kind of paper based. Yeah. And so build Asper from that.
20:37 – 21:02
Maleka Momand: And, it was hard because coming from the Bay area, I had to shed some conventional beliefs about how a tech company should be built, because I just found they didn’t translate to govtech like services. For example, that just didn’t grok with what the sort of gospel was in the Bay area at the time. I think that’s shifted, but I had to learn a whole new market.
21:03 – 21:24
Maleka Momand: And some, you know, at the time, like the wiki articles 0 to 1 by Peter Thiel, those were the big books that everyone was reading, and some of the lessons applied and some of them didn’t. And so figuring that out was, was challenging. But I have to say, I love being in the the builders seat. Then on the other side of it, no offense.
21:24 – 21:42
Sophie Buonassisi: No offense taken. We always say that it’s valuable to be, on both sides, you know, to be a a practitioner, you have such an advantage and kind of purview on the venture and investing side, being on the ground. And then similarly, on the venture side, if you’re not actually operating or shifting, a lot of people shift back and forth.
21:42 – 21:58
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, it’s really easy to become removed. So, you know, for us incubating companies, it’s been a really good way of like getting our feet on the ground. Yeah, kind of sitting on both sides and learning from going through a fundraise process ourselves and things like that. Yeah, that are informative investors because yeah, they’re very different perspectives.
21:58 – 22:00
Maleka Momand: And different perspectives. Equally valuable.
22:00 – 22:04
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah. And incredibly valuable to have yourself as a founder, having been on the VC side.
22:04 – 22:10
Maleka Momand: Yeah, it was easy to anticipate all of the questions that we would get in when we were fundraising early on.
22:10 – 22:26
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, definitely. And you know, you mentioned you’ve read a couple of books and some of the lessons applied and some of them didn’t. So I’m curious for yourself being eight years in building and also having sat on the venture side for a lot of founders that are perhaps earlier in their journey, what are some of the key pieces of advice or lessons that you’ve learned along the way?
22:26 – 22:32
Sophie Buonassisi: Just around company building in general might not pertain specifically to GovTech, but just as a founder.
22:32 – 22:56
Maleka Momand: Yeah. So I and anti productivity books, I think the only like book I really love is New Rules rules by Reed Hastings, the Netflix CEO. Like what a great book but I actually way prefer reading autobiographies and just like fiction books that really inspire one to go do hard things. So, for example, I really love the book The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.
22:57 – 23:12
Maleka Momand: I love Lonesome Dove and the sort of throughline that all of these books have is the characters, the protagonists have, sort of like an indomitable spirit, a love of their nation.
23:12 – 23:13
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah.
23:13 – 23:42
Maleka Momand: And, don’t back down from hard challenges. So I actually, one of my mentors has always encouraged me to read fiction, and let your imagination play and be inspired by characters. And I think that’s a great lesson for founders. Like, we get so much advice, don’t read the productivity book. Like, read a great story that inspires you and makes you want to stay up all night finishing and finding out what happens to the character, and then take some of those lessons into your real life.
23:42 – 23:47
Maleka Momand: So, that’s the piece of advice I would give to founders read fiction.
23:47 – 24:04
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, that’s great advice. And I mean, storytelling is one of the most ancient ways that we have of actually disseminating and sharing information. Yeah, without fiction, it becomes harder to actually have that imagination spurred. Yeah, brilliant. And some good recommendations in there. We’ll have those in the show notes for anyone looking for,
24:04 – 24:08
Maleka Momand: Everyone who’s fiction. Lonesome Dove. I’m even got a book. Yeah.
24:08 – 24:09
Sophie Buonassisi: I to read it myself.
24:09 – 24:10
Maleka Momand: So good. It’s so good.
24:10 – 24:12
Sophie Buonassisi: But it’ll be next to me. Next on my list.
24:12 – 24:14
Maleka Momand: That’s a big one. Just prepare yourself.
24:14 – 24:40
Sophie Buonassisi: For a long read. That’s awesome. A last question for you, Malachi’s. You’ve talked a little bit about AI and what it can do around, productivity, but also increasing chaos, if you will, when things are not structured correctly. Curious what your take is there because you’ve seen such unstructured data or such kind of that complicated policies and documentation that needs transformation.
24:40 – 24:44
Sophie Buonassisi: So really curious. And your take around AI. Yeah. Not space.
24:44 – 25:22
Maleka Momand: The biggest sort of blocker or slow down when you’re implementing with a new customer is the quality of their data. Usually it’s in PDFs that need to be migrated to doc X and then, you know, or OCR, and then structured inside of our platform and then it becomes usable. Yeah. So we’re seeing a lot of like chief AI officers and government soliciting AI tools, which I think is great, but my my piece of advice is like the the underlying data quality isn’t quite there yet and there needs to be investment.
25:22 – 25:44
Maleka Momand: And making that really usable. Which Jasper helps. Do other other companies help you as well otherwise? Like it’s not that valuable. So on the customer side that’s true. And also internally as a business owner, you know, everyone has a cloud code account, but there needs to be like parameters and ROI around it versus just vibe coding. It’s you.
25:44 – 25:51
Maleka Momand: I kind of raise my eyebrows when companies just talk about all of their engineers vibe coding something like, is it good?
25:51 – 25:52
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah.
25:52 – 25:54
Maleka Momand: You know, how much did you spent? Like, actually.
25:54 – 25:56
Sophie Buonassisi: For outcome, not for action for.
25:56 – 26:04
Maleka Momand: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like you have to build things that matter. There’s, a wiki article or Paul Graham article, but. Yeah.
26:04 – 26:05
Sophie Buonassisi: Article.
26:05 – 26:12
Maleka Momand: Yeah. The quality of the data, the expectation of what you want to get out from it needs to be there.
26:12 – 26:14
Sophie Buonassisi: Definitely. How are you using AI internally at Asper?
26:14 – 26:43
Maleka Momand: Oh, man, we have so many agents. Okay, the my favorite way that we actually do this is we’ve set up, a tool called poly. Okay. Where, it helps new team members really onboard quickly. Poly has been trained on all of our customer videos, all of our internal content, so that when a new person is Esper on boards, they’re sort of being taught by poly about how Esper works and what our customers care about and our value props and the product.
26:43 – 26:55
Maleka Momand: Comment, objections, etc.. And like, that’s a really practical way that, has helped new people get up to speed faster, and then it continually reinforces and gets smarter as, as we learn more about our customer.
26:55 – 27:03
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, that that’s fantastic. And, I’m sure that’ll be helpful with all the roles that you’re hiring for too soon here, especially as you hire more and more.
27:03 – 27:17
Maleka Momand: Yeah. Look, we’re we’re cranking right now. Like the demand for software has never been higher in government. The budgets are there and we’re trying to keep up. So if anyone is interested, check out ask McCombs careers.
27:17 – 27:27
Sophie Buonassisi: As for.com/careers, yeah, very exciting time and an ideal place to have the demand. Okay, so you’re hiring a ton of roles. What what is the culture within Esper as you’re scaling.
27:27 – 27:56
Maleka Momand: So we’re a govtech company. And I think that the number one thing I look for with people that we hire is, interest in having a career that’s meaningful, that they can truly share and be proud of with their family and colleagues and friends and, you know, sort of evangelize, so meaningful and wanting to make an impact in, in the world, in, especially in our government, one of our oldest institutions is a big part of our culture, or high agency culture.
27:56 – 28:26
Maleka Momand: We really value individual liberty for ourselves and for others. We’re not an ask for permission culture. We’re a do it culture. And what I really love about our team is that, people like to push themselves professionally and also personally. You know, people are doing Ironman championships and, you know, performing in violin recitals. All that to say, like, these are well-rounded team members that are a high integrity, high agency, people.
28:26 – 28:35
Maleka Momand: And, you know, our retention rate, the company is like quite high because people like working here and like making a difference that meaningful impact.
28:35 – 28:46
Sophie Buonassisi: And we talk a lot about of course in the investment space from all all the articles around good quests, pursuing. Good question. I think it’s safe to say Espers are very, very good. Question is are we looking for an impactful career, a.
28:46 – 28:49
Maleka Momand: Good quest, like going back to the wolf, not to bring up Lonesome Dove again.
28:50 – 28:50
Sophie Buonassisi: Like.
28:50 – 29:00
Maleka Momand: You know, being able to tell a great story about what you do and the impacts that you have for other people is, in my mind, like the best part of having a rewarding career?
29:00 – 29:04
Sophie Buonassisi: Incredible. Maleka. This has been a fantastic conversation. Really appreciate the time. Thank you for joining.
29:04 – 29:06
Maleka Momand: Thank you. I think Sophie appreciate it.
29:06 – 29:07
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah.
