Zac Bookman – How Government Works – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP.10]

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Founder's Field Guide. Founder's Field Guide is a series of conversations with founders, CEOs, and operators building great businesses. I believe we are all builders in our own way and this series is dedicated to stories and lessons from builders of all types. You can find more episodes at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:52)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:18)
My guest today is Zac Bookman. Zac is the founder and CEO of OpenGov, a budgeting and financial management software for local governments. Before he founded OpenGov, Zac was an advisor to US. Army General HR. McMaster in Afghanistan, a law clerk and a Fullbright Fellow studying corruption in the Mexican government. This conversation is one of the most unique and wide-ranging of any I've had on the show.
We cover how Zac built a world-class sales organization, why you should build momentum in your business and the role that capital efficiency still plays in building great companies.
We also dive into the details on how local government works from mayors down to school board meetings. Please enjoy my conversation with Zac Bookman. So Zac, I always try to think of an interesting place to begin these conversations, but I don't know how hard I need to work for this one because we're going to talk about a topic that I've never covered before, which is how the government works and why software businesses may be interesting to build in this sector. Everyone always wants big markets. I don't know if there's a market bigger than government. Maybe you can begin by explaining the origin stories here, both for you and for OpenGov. Why what you did prior to OpenGov brought you to that point and kind of what the point of origin was for the business itself.

**Zac Bookman** (3:26)
Thanks for having me, Patrick. Really excited to be here.
I grew up near government. I grew up in the Washington, DC area. My father was a civil servant.
In DC everyone knows someone who works in government. It's an industry town. When I came out to the Valley, and we actually started raising money for OpenGov, it's kind of funny, but a lot of investors said, this is crazy. I came to the Valley to get away from government. I don't want anything to do with this.
I studied government. I went to law school. I did a master's degree in public administration. And then I went down to Mexico and studied corruption in the Mexican government on a Fullbright Fellowship.
I had a brief law career. I was a law clerk for a federal judge and then a trial litigator. And then went overseas to Afghanistan. I served as an advisor to US. Army General HR. McMaster on the Anti-Corruption Task Force. And we started OpenGov, four of us. I was living in half a shipping container with two soldiers in Kabul in 2012 when we got this off the ground. Our chairman and co-founder, Joe Lonsdale, who was a co-founder of Palantir, and two really bright young technologists from Stanford, got it going back in the Valley. Basically, for the prior couple of years, this is like nine, 10, 11 We've been studying the California budget crisis. Post-recession, all these governments about to hit the wall. Three in California actually went bankrupt. Twelve were predicted to go bankrupt. We were coming of age, wondering like, wow, how is this possible? These bedrock institutions aren't on bedrock at all.