Esper CEO: Why GovTech Sales Takes Three Years and Professional Services Are a Moat
Maleka Momand, CEO of government policy software vendor Esper, laid out the hard truths of selling to public sector on GTMnow: three-year sales cycles are standard, trust wins before product does, and professional services build moats.
Esper raised $10.7M (led by 8VC and Cota Capital) to sell policy management software to state and local government. Think NYPD procedure manuals, Tennessee healthcare licensing, Arkansas hunting permits. The company digitises paper-based regulatory workflows that agencies still run manually.
The Sales Motion
Momand's ICP filter: complexity, catalyst, volume. Translation: heavy regulation, a change agent inside who is tired of the status quo, and enough work to justify switching systems. That pattern works across health, public safety, and licensing.
The go-to-market reality: governments look for reasons not to trust new vendors. A failed purchase becomes a headline and someone loses their job. Momand's playbook: advisory boards of respected officials, low-cost pilots for case studies, sometimes lobbyists. Expect three years before you are really in.
Professional Services as Moat
Most SaaS companies treat services as necessary evil. Esper treats them as competitive advantage. Government expects high-touch implementation. Agencies need help migrating decades of paper policy into live digital workflows. That services layer creates switching costs and deepens customer relationships.
Momand runs services in-house rather than through partners. Control matters when your customer is a public agency with compliance requirements and political exposure.
What This Means for Sales
If you are selling into government or regulated markets: quota relief better factor in 18 to 36 month cycles. Your comp plan needs to reward early-stage work (pilots, advisory relationships) not just closed deals. And if your company treats services as cost center rather than strategic asset, ask why.
Esper is hiring into Kansas and New York City expansion. No public comp data yet, but government sales roles typically skew longer ramp periods and lower velocity than commercial SaaS. Worth noting: the company is eight years in and still venture-backed, which tells you something about the pace of this market.
DOGE Effect
Momand noted that government efficiency pushes are happening across red and blue states, not just federal. Agencies are looking to digitise and automate. Whether that translates to faster procurement or just more RFPs remains to be seen.