Chizo spoke with Mariel Reed, co-founder and CEO of CoProcure. Mariel discusses her previous work at Coursera and at the Mayor’s Office for the City and County of San Francisco, before finally discussing procurement and the role her company, CoProcure, plays in making fulfilling public procurement contracts easier for municipal and state governments.
Episode credits: Hosted by Chizo
Cover art created by modifying Abstract Shapes © Nathan Covert (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)
Note: This episode was recorded before Chizobam began their term as a Digital Corp Fellow at the General Services Administration. The views represented are their own and do not reflect the views of GSA.
References mentioned in this episode:
Mayor’s Office of Innovation for the City and County of San Francisco
Learn about Coursera’s role in expanding learning opportunities
All episodes include a transcript of the conversation for our newsletter subscribers. Please find the transcript of the interview below.
[00:00:00] Evan DeBroux: Hello, and welcome to think civic, a podcast where we explore civic responsibility and tech policy design and more I'm Evan
[00:00:18] Chizobam Nwagwu: And I' m Chizo.
[00:00:19] Evan DeBroux: This episode will be the first of a two part mini series focusing on procurement and women own small businesses in the civic tech space.
[00:00:27] Chizobam Nwagwu: This series will be my last episodes as a host on the pod.
[00:00:30] It's been really awesome learning how to run a podcast and about the space in general, and also further the work that Evan and Ajay started back when yeah, they started the pod. I'm really excited about the next thing I'll be working on and really wish nothing but the best for Evan and Ajay as they continue the pod.
[00:00:47] Evan DeBroux: And we are both grateful for the work that Chizo has done in the past few months with us. She has taken us in so many different and wonderful directions on this pod and explored different topics that I don't think we would've really gotten to if you had not been with us. So on behalf of me and Ajay, thank you very much for all the work you've done, Chizo.
[00:01:11] Chizobam Nwagwu: Thanks! This episode, we spoke with Mariel Reed, co-founder and CEO of CoProcure. CoProcure is a SAS company that makes finding cooperative contracts for state and local governments across the country easy for government procurement professionals all for free. Before starting CoProcure, Mariel started her career as an international and policy education person, volunteering with Princeton and Asia and going on to become the regional manager at Coursera for Asia, but CoProcure's vision stems from her time working with the San Francisco's Office of Innovation, where she built private and public partnerships and tackled procurement and talent head on.
[00:01:51] As someone with limited, pretty limited experience of understanding what procurement is and why it's so important for making government work better, it was quite an informative conversation for me. I hope our listeners are really are able to take away from not only how startups fit into this ecosystem of civic tech, and maybe even tech more generally with government, but also how that there's so many different versions of what it means to serve the public.
[00:02:18] Evan DeBroux: So this sounds like a fascinating conversation and I'm looking forward to hearing it. Some additional program notes for you all, make sure you're following us on our new Twitter handle @thinkcivicpod to join in on the conversation after this episode. Like we mentioned in our season premiere, we launched a new substack newsletter to make sure you never miss an episode. Every podcast episode will be delivered with links for all streaming platforms, key takeaways and references mentioned. And, for the full transcript for folks that prefer to read up on the conversatiom, please hit subscribe at thinkcivic.substack.com. Now, without much further ado here's our conversation with Mariel Reed.
[00:03:00] Chizobam Nwagwu: Afternoon, Mariel. Thank you again for taking time to come on the pod.
[00:03:05] Mariel Reed: Yeah. Excited to be here.
[00:03:06] Chizobam Nwagwu: Just to start off for conversation. Could you start by telling us a little about yourself? Yeah. What really started you to motivated you to also want to start CoProcure?
[00:03:15] Mariel Reed: Oh man. Yeah, like, did I know from the earliest days, did I aspire to be working in public procurement? No, it was not on my radar. I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and I was always interested in something more mission and service oriented. And I think some of that comes from my mom's side of the family and our history. My great, great grandfather arrived in America alone and basically, you know, lived in the basement of a synagogue for a chunk of time before eventually, like, going to college and basically like relied a lot on the community and eventually was able to bring like a lot of family members over anyway.
[00:03:52] So, international was interesting, but always a desire to do something like service-oriented as well. So, I thought I'd go into foreign policy, learn Chinese, and spend my early career actually living and working in mainland China in philanthropy and education. And I loved that work. I was part of doing grant making around education programs and helping more people get access to education, but it was really slow. Philanthropy, the pace of philanthropy; it's cool cause you can have a really long term approach, but for someone kind of just outta school and hungry to kind of see impact a bit more immediately, it was a little bit slow.
[00:04:28] So this was like 2011, 2012. The year of the massive open online course.
[00:04:32] Chizobam Nwagwu: Yeah.
[00:04:33] Mariel Reed: Pre-COVID and like pre Zoom school, and I was really excited about what technology was doing to expand access to education and pretty quickly. So, I ended up moving to the United States and to the Bay Area for the first time to join Coursera, which at the time was a pretty young startup. I think we'd just raised our series A, maybe 30, 40 people, something like that. So really exciting time for the company. And a totally new different approach for me to be cast sort of into the tech and the startup space. Loved that pace, loved the mission. So of course, Coursera, you know, is now a public company, but at the time the big mission was expand access, you know, democratize access to these universities around the world, which have historically only been available to a few people.
[00:05:17] And so loved that team. Definitely had like really intense imposter syndrome. My first couple months there, like, kind of looking around being, like, did they make a mistake? Were they sure? But I was focused still on Asia. So I was able to be back and forth a lot in, you know, U.S. To China, helping to really activate the market for Coursera and for learners in China and bring some of the best universities in Asia online as well.
[00:05:40] So, loved that work and stayed for about three years, but as I was kind of really enjoying my day job in tech and enjoying kind of being back in the United States, I was also kind of reconciling the version of America. I encountered as a young techie in San Francisco against the version of America. I had been evangelizing for the time that I was abroad.
[00:06:01] And in particular, I think I felt, and I think we talk now pretty openly about this as a country. Uh, it was a different moment in time when this idea is kind of starting to take root in my mind, but just a lot of, I think shame about like, we spend so much money, we're the wealthiest country in the world. And yet we have so many public problems that are so obvious
[00:06:20] Chizobam Nwagwu: For sure.
[00:06:21] Mariel Reed: And you know, all of my, you know, travels in the, you know, so called "developing world." It still seemed like there are a lot of problems that other nations had figured out that America is still really struggling with. So this is also a point in time where Coursera was facing a lot more pressure to monetize. And so I think, you know, part of my journey was kind of grappling with like, hey, I really like this space, the creativity of tech, the caliber of talent in tech, the pace, a lot of fun, but also pretty feeling, pretty puzzled. I was feeling pretty puzzled about. Those resources weren't making their way into government and the public sector.
[00:06:58] So ended up a friend in the Code for America network, convinced me to join local government. To understand that disconnect a bit more like why we pay so much money for public services. Why can't we solve some of these public challenges and ended up joining the Mayor's Office in the City and County of San Francisco.
[00:07:16] And really, I was kind of trying to figure out and be a part of, you know, government has kind of the mandate, the resources to have impact to address these public challenges. And I was curious like, why is it so hard? That was really the place where I fell in love with public purchasing. And I got to work on a handful of projects that were procurement related. And I got to see man for everything that we try to do to make government work better. So many of those decisions actually come down to who are we able to work with? How quickly are we able to get access to that talent or those products to deliver the thing? What minds across the country, if they're not directly working for public service are interested in solving public challenges? And how can that group of people be wider and more diverse?
[00:07:58] So, yeah, sorry. That was a lot, but that was my journey and what led me to public procurement and ultimately to start CoProcure.
[00:08:04] Chizobam Nwagwu: Yeah, no worries. I think that's really interesting. Definitely resonate with yeah. Trying to reconcile the international experience versus that like coming back to the states and being like, wait, like we have the resources are there, the financing is there, like, why isn't this working and definitely wanna take a step back. I think at this point to just have you define what is procurement and really the role that it plays in government. At least as someone who has very limited procurement knowledge, it's interesting how many times it comes up in a lot of talks relating to civic tech of like, we need to solve this procurement problem with hiring, which is a whole nother thing as well.
[00:08:44] Mariel Reed: Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the classic, it's almost a meme at this point. I feel like around like, oh wait, how long have you been in government? You know, it's like first year or two, you're sort of like, hmm, I keep hearing a lot about procurement. And then like next couple years, you know, you're like, hmm, we should maybe do something about procurement. And then, you know, finally you're just like, oh my God, we have to do something about procurement.
[00:09:05] Yeah. So what is it? It certainly is like a popular topic of conversation in the civic tech space. Not as popular at dinner parties, but working on it, actually it, but it is really fascinating. So basically at a high level, procurement is the set of rules and regulations that determines the process by which public agencies across the country buy things.
[00:09:25] So basically procurement is shopping, but it's shopping for services, shopping for goods. And unlike the shopping experience that you or I have as a, you know, consumer/private consumer, where we can go online and pretty much buy anything. It is very regulated.
[00:09:41] So what I like to say to people in outside of government who haven't really experienced procurement is just like, you know, close your eyes. Imagine if you couldn't access any eCommerce websites at all. So like no Google, no Amazon take all of those away. . And then also imagine that, you know, in raising your hand for the thing that you needed, it was not gonna just, you know, be tomorrow next day, tomorrow, next week, but 4 to 24 or more months.
[00:10:09] So that's the buying experience in government. So again, if you contrast that with like, cool, I can go on Amazon or I could. You know, go buy some clothes or order takeout or buy a babysitter in just a few minutes. It's pretty crazy that the shopping experience in government is so different from that one.
[00:10:25] Chizobam Nwagwu: That's really interesting, cause definitely I am that person who's like I need this X, Y, Z thing that I just can't really bother to go start to find. Probably gonna go shop on Amazon first.
[00:10:37] Mariel Reed: Yeah, I think I remember, you know, it's crazy also as a young person working in government and it sounds like, you know, you'll have this experience if you haven't already. And I know a lot of folks listening probably have as well, like going into your place of work and being able to like on your cell phone, like I said, call a car, or like order takeout, or buy a pair of jeans or whatever in like a few minutes. And. When you're like, okay, great. I need to, you know, spend millions of dollars on a very urgent high priority project, and it's gonna take like two or more years. That's really crazy. And it's also, it's really tough. Like when we aspire to deliver really good services, part of delivering high quality services, I think is speed. You know, if a process is broken, if the status quo isn't working and you wanna make it better within government and, and most, you know, public servants, are public service oriented. Like that is why you go into work. So it is really hard and, and often very frustrating when you are trying to deliver better service and you're blocked, but it also is not fair to blame the people in procurement. I know, you know, everyone loves to sort of gripe about procurement, but the folks in procurement oftentimes do an amazing job of navigating rules and regulations.
[00:11:47] So the reason procurement is so slow is because it is regulated. Those regulations are really, well, they have good intention, right? We don't want like you or me to just give a huge contract to like our cousin or our brother. We want to avoid public corruption. And so the requirements basically state that you need to purchase off of a contract that's been created through a competitive process.
[00:12:10] And typically, no matter what level of government you're at, you know, local state federal, the default setting is to meet that requirement by making your own contract from scratch. So that process, when people typically talk about procurement, they're talking about that process. Sometimes people call it the request for proposals process. It can include a lot more than just RFPs. But again, at the most abstract level, it says, if you wanna buy something in government, there has to be competition, and typically that means you have to buy off a contract that's been created through a competitive process. So that's the default setting and creating your own contract from scratch.
[00:12:47] Like I said, takes anywhere from four months on the sort of very fastest side to, you know, two plus years, oftentimes more, especially if it's something complicated like technology. So the good news is there are workarounds. So, you know, oftentimes tech startups that are just operating will avoid... sorry. I should back up and say the more money you wanna spend, the more regulation you face. So, you know, there's a threshold under which you're able to spend money relatively quickly in government. The challenges that threshold can vary a lot place to place. So, you know, it's $10,000 in the City and County, San Francisco, it's $50,000 in Palo Alto, but it can be two or $3,000 in a lot of the public agencies that we serve in different areas of the country as well. So you hit that dollar threshold and you have to buy off of a competitively created contract. The alternative to using a contract that you make from scratch on your own is you can buy off of a contract that some other public agency has already created.
[00:13:46] So, this is actually a legal best practice. It's a huge industry already. We think over 200 billion dollars at the state and local government level flows through these shareable contracts and the main limitation today is. You know, it's a legal best practice. Governments know they can buy this way, but they can't find the contracts.
[00:14:04] So they're, you know, buyers in state and local government all across the country are literally calling each other and emailing each other, using like 1990s technology to try and find a contract that they can use to make the procurement process just a little bit more efficient.
[00:14:18] Chizobam Nwagwu: Yeah, I think that's really helpful synopsis. With that, what would you say are the sorts of businesses that are currently like well suited to bid on these either government contracts in general, or just cooperative contracts? Really interested in trying to understand the problem that your company is actually trying to solve.
[00:14:37] Mariel Reed: Yeah. So the challenge today is if you want to participate in the government sector, you not only have to win your first contract, and as I mentioned, that means you have to typically respond to a solicitation for proposals or for bids. And then wait, you know, over 4 to 24 months to figure out if you've even won that business. You not only have to do that once, but you actually have to do that every single time you wanna do business with government.
[00:15:05] So if I'm a small vendor, you know, and I'm looking to do business with the government, my cost of acquisition for each government customer is really high. And I remember when I was leaving public service, I was talking to friends in private sector tech companies like Stripe, Lever, all these companies where I was like: "there's a need for the product that you have in government. Why don't you sell to public entities?" And they just kind of laughed at me and they said: "you know, we know it's a huge market, but we have all these private industry customers basically banging down our door. Why would we go and try to sell into government? It just doesn't make economic sense."
[00:15:42] And that's a shame because state and local governments spend $2 trillion of our taxpayer money every single year with vendors. It's an absolutely huge market, and arguably it's way less competitive unfortunately than it's intended to be. You know, again, those rules and regulations are there to promote competition, but unfortunately, the cost of participation so often deters, I think our best and brightest minds across the country from thinking about serving the space.
[00:16:09] So a big hypothesis of CoProcure, one of the things we're out there to hopefully help is we want there to be a more diverse and just a more problem solvers working on public challenges. And we think the way to do that is to bring down, to change the game, right? To change the economics, to bring down the cost of customer acquisition and the cost of playing in the space.
[00:16:28] So today, if you're a vendor, you face a couple obstacles, one is cost another is just knowledge and the learning curve to get up to speed on how all of this works. So, you know, at CoProcure, what we're doing essentially is, as I said, there are those two options in government. You can buy off of a contract that you create over a new process, 4 to 24 months, or you can use a contract that already exists out there. You just have to be able to find it. And so in talking to these public servants across the country, you know, they wanna buy off of these contracts. If you can buy off an existing contract, you can get the good or service shipped in like a few days.
[00:17:02] Even same day transaction is possible, but finding that contract today, is really hard. And as I said, you know, the default search approach is like from the nineties. It's like call your friends, email a couple folks in your network. Maybe go to a few different government websites, like check your state. I'm in California. So it'd be the state of California, maybe check the General Services Administration, GSA, contracts. And if I don't get a hit, I'm in a default to running that new process.
[00:17:28] How cooperative contracts work is these are contracts that have been created through a formal solicitation process. So they meet the requirements around competition, and a vendor can use that contract once that vendor has been awarded to sell to other entities. And that's incredible because as a vendor, what that means is every single time you go out and you participate in a competitive bidding process, whether that's with the local government, whether that's with the state entity, or the federal government's GSA program, you are participating in a process that will enable you to win a contract, not just to sell the one entity, but actually to access more users in the market.
[00:18:04] So if you think about that from like an economic sort of, you know, perspective and that cost of acquisition of those customers changes the game, right? All of a sudden, it's not one to one, like it costs me, you know, $15,000 to apply to this process over a number of years, $15,000 for the next one. But instead, hey, I won this one and now I can actually leverage that to sell to the rest of the market. So that's our aspiration at CoProcure and what we've basically done is aggregated... you know, we have the country's largest database of these shareable contracts created not just from the federal government, from groups called national purchasing cooperatives, which are in the business of creating these shareable contracts for state and local governments across the country, but also state and local entities as well.
[00:18:47] And again, our aspiration is. Bring down the costs the same way, the common application in higher education dramatically reduced the friction around applying to higher education and resulted in, you know, unprecedented number of first generation minority women, college enrollments. We wanna do the same thing for bringing down the costs to do business with government, but starting from: "how do we already take advantage of the work that's been done?"
[00:19:11] Because the second thing is there are actually a lot of businesses that have already been awarded these contracts and don't know. So, as I mentioned before, there are kind of these two barriers: one, upfront is like the cost straight up, like the economic calculation of how much time is it gonna take to like navigate and respond to this business? You know, does our business have sort of the capital to invest in that process over a longer period of time? The second, of course, is like the knowledge and awareness. And unfortunately, even the businesses that have been able to apply and do business and sort of be awarded these contracts. Oftentimes don't realize that they've won a contract that they can use to sell to other public entities.
[00:19:48] And we're discovering that, especially as we unlock more data at the local government level, These local governments tend to work with local and more diverse vendors. And those vendors oftentimes have been awarded a contract that they could use to sell into the region or actually into the broader market.
[00:20:03] And it's been really exciting and energizing to help those businesses become more discoverable cause governments wanna work with them too.
[00:20:09] Chizobam Nwagwu: Yeah.
[00:20:09] Mariel Reed: So that's the second thing. And then ultimately there needs to be more of an incentive for governments to take a risk. I was on the Innovation Team at the Mayor's Office in the City and County of San Francisco, and I can tell you it's so hard to go first. The amount of, sort of risk that you take the expense of doing something new and trying a different approach, even if it's just working with a vendor in a totally established category, that's never served government before. Like that is scary, cause you don't know necessarily what you're gonna get.
[00:20:35] And today it's like, you take on all that risk on your own, and then others may or may not sort of benefit from the risk, but there's no return to the government that takes the risk. In a future state, we think it would be awesome if CoProcure could not only not charge government entities to work with them. So we don't sell the government, like an Amazon search or Google search or any internet search, like CoProcure is totally free. And we think it'd be really awesome to not only not charge public entities, but to help those public entities actually make better calculations and potentially even recoup the investment, the R&D investment, that they make in onboarding a new vendor, creating a new category, moving the whole industry forward.
[00:21:15] Chizobam Nwagwu: Hmm.
[00:21:15] Mariel Reed: And kind of sharing across governments and public agencies that like R&D and risk budget so that the entire sector can benefit. And, and ultimately, so that we as residents and taxpayers can benefit too.
[00:21:26] Chizobam Nwagwu: How did you decide on, being like a solely proprietary platform versus maybe going an open source route. I think that's something that's been in conversation of, you know, why not, you know, create a platform that local governments or state governments could be able to spin up on their own from, you know, one version really interested in how your, yeah, your team made that decision?
[00:21:47] Mariel Reed: Yeah, so I guess there were a couple of thoughts or calculations early on in my journey. When I left government, I knew I'd worked on a few projects where I got to really just see concretely the impact of a better purchasing decision. So there's a program that I, you know, contributed to in the City and County of San Francisco called Startup and Residence since spun out and become its own legal entity. But there were some lessons from that experience, especially around again, just like man, when you get a procurement right, the experience for residents improves a new business, gets access to this huge market and the experience of working government is better too. And so I thought about it. I was like, okay, do I stay in government? And do I just, you know, try to help maybe grow this program, but it's really hard cause there is no local or state government that's totally incentivized to build collaboration infrastructure and maintain that infrastructure for all the other governments.
[00:22:40] And so structurally I was pretty convinced that I couldn't stay and have the kind of impact that I wanted to be a part of when it came to making procurement just a little bit more efficient, or maybe even dramatically more efficient across the country, by staying within the public sector.
[00:22:55] And then I was like, okay, nonprofit for profit? What's this gonna look like? And after considering all the options ultimately decided to build a venture backed technology company. Part of this was the lesson I think at Coursera against then sort of like similar Competitor at X, which had been created by Harvard and MIT, both setting funds aside and was a nonprofit.
[00:23:17] And a lot of the folks in academia that we worked with at Coursera really liked that non-profit kind of perspective. It was like, it was somehow inherently a bit more trustworthy to be, not for profit. But the problem was talent is really expensive, and so if you're gonna recruit like the best and the brightest people, to be able to build something at the level of ambition, I think that we have and move really quickly doing that, it does require capital. So that was the reason I was like, look like changing the way local and state governments purchase, you know, helping to be a part of transforming to trillion dollars a year, that is a very audacious goal. And we're gonna need talent to go along with that.
[00:23:59] The question that you asked around open source versus like, you know, a proprietary platform was actually one of the ones like we didn't spend a ton of time on, not because it couldn't be possible, but I think I have seen again, the fragmentation that occurs. Like the very problem that we're trying to solve is all of this data lives in all different structures, formats, standards across the country, from like physical filing cabinets to like, yes, there's a digital system, but like the metadata is all different. The standard is all different. And a big part of what we're trying to do is like bring the technology to bear on creating a standard and like very intentionally we actually don't think that that should be two white labeled. Like we think there should be a standard.
[00:24:44] So how CoProcure works is like if a public agency publishes data, we can pull directly from where they publish it and create a single sort of standard for how that data is displayed and accessible. But if they don't publish it, we actually let them publish the data through CoProcure totally for free.
[00:25:00] Again, because the goal is like to get that data out there and get it into a format that others can use and to not have any public entities be discouraged, not only by the cost to acquire the software, but also unfortunately the cost to maintain it. So I think I've seen everyone thinks proprietary.
[00:25:16] Not everyone, I think that, again, there's this bad reputation of proprietary technology and there are definitely cases where that is very dangerous and, you know, there's lock in and all kinds of other stuff that occurs. I think there's also maybe too much, sometimes optimism around open source as a solution. In my own experience, I've found it can also be incredibly expensive and cumbersome to maintain something or build your own version of it. And unfortunately can, again, lead to sort of more fragmentation, which is a very problem that we're trying to solve.
[00:25:47] So the good news is like the data that CoProcure is collecting is from governments is all technically public information. So there's nothing like: "that data belongs to the governments. It belongs to the public." And yeah, I mean, I think it's really critical and core to the product that we're building to be able to like pull that data, map it to like a consistent and usable format and then to start laying on extra data from the private sector as well that makes that government data even more useful over time.
[00:26:15] Chizobam Nwagwu: Yeah. I think that's a really helpful picture of the differences, especially in the note, that of the difference between being a for-profit versus a nonprofit. And I think that's actually a really good transition to what you mentioned about sourcing talent.
[00:26:31] So in regards to like the makeup, your, of your team, that definitely, I think there we've we've noticed is that there's been an increase in the mission, in mission-driven startups in the past couple of years. How have you thought about sourcing talent for your company in a way that's really equitable? I think something that I actually immediately kind of stood out to me was that most of your team appeared to be women identifying or non-binary how that shaped your, yeah. I really wanna understand how that shaped your perspective in this line of work, especially when it comes to recruiting in the space of civic tech.
[00:27:03] Mariel Reed: Totally. Yeah, I reflected on my experience in government, one of the things that is awesome about working in the public sector is the workforce is so diverse. And so that is great. I think, especially, you know, like the population that the public sector serves is also diverse. And so it is really important to be building with and, you know, like have a team that reflects, like, the people that you're trying to have impact with and work with. We've done well in some ways and not well in other ways, and I will say it's hard. I think recruiting as a startup is always hard.
[00:27:40] I think we have an advantage serving the public sector and that our mission really guides the work. And I think that's very clear and it's allowed us to, I think peel away, convinced very, very expensive, talented people to work on something for less compensation that they would otherwise get in the market because they wanna not only feel like.
[00:28:00] The work that they're doing, isn't evil, you know, like in the tech sector, but actually clearly has a lot of good. We're definitely doing well when it comes to recruiting women. I think in part, because myself and my co-founder Alicia, Alicia was the first female engineer at Dropbox. She was number 25 or 26 on the engineering team. So that's also kind of crazy like 25 or 26 before hiring a woman is like, yeah, different time. But she was the first female hired into that team. And when we met, she had, I think a three or four year old and a six month old. So she definitely wasn't thinking about being part of a startup, but I think she'd been looking for something more impact-oriented.
[00:28:40] And since then, as you noted, the team has grown. And one of the things I'm, like I said, really proud of is our ability to build a majority female identifying product and engineering team. And we do have a mix of experiences, a mix of, you know, socioeconomic backgrounds on the team as well, but we can always be doing better.
[00:28:58] And I think one of the particular challenges in the startup, you know, government is diverse startup and tech, the startup and tech industry is noticeably like not, and there's a lot of room for improvement overall. I think one of the things in particular at a early stage startup, and this is changing now, cause we just raised our series a so we actually have more sort of cash and compensation available, but in the very early days, it's really hard because you do take a pay cut. Like certainly for tech, and I think that's something that I thought a lot about because looking at how sort of capital and wealth gets created in Silicon Valley overall, there's a history of people being able to take risks to join early stage companies, get a lot of equity in that company. And then of course like that transforms not only their lives, but actually like their entire family for generations as a result, but it does take privilege to be able to say, "hey, I'm gonna like, I've achieved this very lucrative position in the tech industry. And now I'm gonna like take that opportunity cost I'm okay with trading in a couple years of certainty, potentially for me, potentially for others in my family to go and take a risk."
[00:30:07] So I think structurally that's, I don't know. I don't have any great solutions for it yet. Like it's hard. Obviously like at the moment when you're starting a business, you don't have a lot to go on, but I think it's something I thought a lot about as we also think about compensation in the startup space, being both equity and salary, cash is scarce in the early days, equity is not, but it takes a certain amount of privilege to be able to take that risk and invest, you know, in the offer that is equity heavy and not cash heavy, both for you personally, and then also for what it means for your family.
[00:30:41] Chizobam Nwagwu: Yeah, I'd say, given your experience like working in government, like, do you think it's important for young folks and people of non-traditional backgrounds to be able to find opportunities in that space? How do you think that could be taking place better? And also kind of touched on it a bit, but where do you see startups? Especially within the civic tech space, playing a role in that as well.
[00:31:03] Mariel Reed: Yeah, I think it's hard. So man, there's a lot there. I think in terms of, so I guess taking a step back. I definitely feel strongly that the entire tech industry needs to work harder at diversity. And as I said, it's something we're also thinking a lot about on our own team as we continue to grow too, because we've done well in some ways and not well in other ways. And I think civic tech probably does better overall the tech industry more broadly, at least at the earlier stages of a startup, because there's more of a mission aspect.
[00:31:39] And so I think a lot of people that come from, I would say like non-traditional backgrounds, certainly like, you know, for women in the space, tend to gravitate a bit more towards mission oriented work. And so I think probably the civic tech space, like tracks a bit better than tech overall. Again, I think the exception is just like tech can afford to pay more. And so there is that trade off of like, if you've made it into the tech space, that personal trade off of like, where do I fall? Do I need sacrifice mission for comp? And you know, do I like this culture? We're trying to have our cake and eat it to at CoProcure, I think, which is like, how do we build a really large successful business?
[00:32:19] That also unlocks incredible and very much needed impact when making government work better across the board. But that is, and of itself a bit of an experiment. Sorry, I would just say stay tuned.
[00:32:29] Chizobam Nwagwu: Yeah.
[00:32:29] Mariel Reed: So far so good, but we'll see.
[00:32:31] Chizobam Nwagwu: I guess to close up, I'd say, what is your vision for the future of government procurement and what do you see as the role that CoProcure here has in this space?
[00:32:42] Mariel Reed: Yeah, so , those are also good. Big questions. Procurement should be the conduit that connects talent from across our country that is, you know, equipped to deliver the goods and services, you know, the public servants need. To provide fast and high quality services to the residents, you know, across the country that, that rely on those services.
[00:33:10] So often, as I mentioned today, and as we started talking about it, we looked at procurement as kind of the obstacle the thing that we have to get through or around, but procurement should actually be the connector, the conduit, and yes, you know, we need to make sure that that happens in a way that is in, you know, aligns with the intention of the regulations.
[00:33:30] You know, we don't want corruption. We certainly want accountability, but, we also want competition. We want the best and the brightest mind solving the problems as quickly as possible because we want the whole sector moving forward.
[00:33:42] So when I think about like, what can procurement look like and what can it do? Like procurement is powering better public services, and it's doing that in a way where people are not, like, oh man, we hate procurement. They're actually like, "man, like procurement is awesome. I had that thing that I needed and like, look at this rad solution that I was able to get, not only into my hands, but actually to end users." You know, those folks that depend on public services.
[00:34:07] I also think it's much more collaborative. So a big aspect of what we're building at CoProcure is governments are legally allowed to collaborate. They're not private sector companies. They're not supposed to hold, you know, the, like, things that they discover close, you know, in as corporate secrets. They're supposed to work together, but the infrastructure for being able to collaborate effectively has never existed.
[00:34:29] Chizobam Nwagwu: Mm-hmm
[00:34:30] Mariel Reed: The technical infrastructure. And so my aspiration for CoProcure is that we power that infrastructure and that CoProcure is, you know, the place where public servants who need something, or have an aspiration around improving a public service goal and it's the first place that vendors who wanna, you know, grow their business in government also look to.
[00:34:52] So I hope we can do a better job of, again, I think it starts with sharing. The work that's already been done and maximizing the value of that for businesses and for taxpayers and residents across the country. But I think beyond that, it also means kind of investing in a smart and collaborative way, taking on the burden, you know, and the risk in a shared.
[00:35:12] And hopefully overall faster way that really allows the whole sector to move forward.
[00:35:16] Chizobam Nwagwu: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Really learned a lot about yeah, for sure. CoProcure and procurement in general. So this has been a really interesting conversation.
[00:35:26] Mariel Reed: Awesome. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me and excited to get the word out. I know public procurement doesn't seem sexy, but when you think about the impact overall, it's a fascinating space and we're just in kind of the early stages. Excited to get the word out and yeah, we're hiring, so appreciate the opportunity and best of luck with your next steps as well.
[00:35:45] Chizobam Nwagwu: Yeah. Thank you.
[00:35:46] Thank you again for taking the time to tune into this episode. We hope you found this conversation with Muriel, as interesting as we did. Do share this with any friends, family, coworkers, or neighbors interested in tech procurement, or public service more generally, or anyone who might be interested in exploring our past episodes.
[00:36:03] Evan DeBroux: As always, please make sure you're following us on our new Twitter handle @thinkcivicpod. Join in on the conversation after this episode, be sure to hit subscribe atthinkcivic.substack.com. Thanks everyone!
Mariel Reed: CoProcure