Carnival In The Cloud: DocuSign has Revolutionized Document Management

In 2014, Forrester conducted a survey of over 400 IT and Line of Business decision-makers across the globe to understand the growing importance of cloud-based Digital Transaction Management (DTM) solutions. Nearly 76% of those surveyed believed that DTM solutions are essential for improving customer experience. In fact 98% of those surveyed believed that paper- and pen-based processes that lead to poor transaction management have led to revenue losses. 37% of companies peg this revenue loss to be in the range of 11% to 25%.

DocuSign’s Offerings

DocuSign was founded in 2003 by entrepreneur and the “father of electronic signatures” Tom Gonser. Prior to setting up DocuSign, Tom had established NetUPDATE, a leading online transaction management system that helped handle mortgage transactions. NetUPDATE was acquired by Mortgagebot in 2009.

DocuSign is a Digital Transaction Management platform that helps companies automate those processes that require actual signatures and thus end up slowing down business transactions. Their platform helps companies keep processes entirely digital from start to finish. DocuSign has been adopted by the real estate industry, almost as a norm.

Their easy-to-use solution allows companies to upload Word or PDF documents that require signatures onto their cloud-based platform. The organization then assigns names and emails of people who are required to sign and places tags at locations where the signatures are required. The process is equally simple for the end-user who can click on the email and using a detailed step-by-step guide complete signing the document. Once done, the documents are saved securely online and can be accessed from anywhere, anytime.

Today, they have more than 50 million users across 188 countries in over 43 languages. They offer their services to over 1,000 credit unions and are the official and exclusive provider of electronic signature services to the National Association of Realtors. Their network is accessed by more than 50,000 new unique users every day.

DocuSign’s Financials

DocuSign charges a monthly fee for access to their platform. For $10 per month, individuals can send up to five documents for signatures per month. Premium enterprise level plans are priced at $125 per user per month and allow businesses to send unlimited documents for signatures, to use reusable templates, enable form and field validation and even transmit documents in bulk and distribute documents on their website for anyone to sign on-demand. They do not disclose any financials.

They have been venture funded so far with $508 million in investments from Dell Ventures, Intel Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Founders Circle Capital, Sands Capital Ventures, Wellington Management, Wasatch Advisors, Iconiq Capital, Recruit Strategic Partners, BBVA Ventures, Salesforce, Telstra, Visa, MKI, EquityZen, SharesPost Investment Management, Cross Creek Advisors, Sigma West, Comcast Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Google Ventures, Frazier Technology Ventures, and Scale Venture Partners. Their last round of funding was held last month when they raised $233 million at $3 billion valuation. A previous round held in March 2014 had valued them at $1.6 billion.

DocuSign has maintained that they have no intention of getting acquired and instead will plan for an IPO. At $3 billion valuation, they do make for an expensive acquisition. Details of their planned IPO have not been revealed.

You can read about many other entrepreneurs who have built successful cloud businesses in my book Carnival In The Cloud and here on my blog.

This segment is a part in the series : Carnival In The Cloud