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Ask HN: Why is Docusign a $50B company?

321 points by akouri 5y ago

I have been searching for a solution to e-sign some lease agreements. It is something that I need to do maybe once a year and the only thing I need is a legally binding way to put signatures and timestamps on a PDF. I do not need any fancy features. I was doing research, and it seems like most document signature companies all charge monthly subscription fees! This does not work for me as I am not using the platform on a monthly basis. Are there free, open source alternatives to Docusign? If so, why do more companies not use them?

rafiki6 5y ago
They've become the defacto document signing platform with wide acceptance across industries and are treated as legally binding in many jurisdictions. They've essentially become the Google of document signing.
tylermenezes 5y ago
Most of the documents people e-sign are related to business deals (contracts, NDAs, etc) or HR (offer letters) which are such high dollar value transactions that the cost of e-signing is negligible. Your use case unfortunately is just not worth it to them in comparison.
- rchaud 5y ago
  Precisely. I first used Docusign when signing an offer for a condo. The subscription fee is handled by the RE agency. The commissions on a single sale pay for a 1-user license probably 1000 times over. One may as well ask "Why does Adobe charge $30/mo for Photoshop?"
Seanambers 5y ago
I just use the PDF sign feature which basically adds a picture of my signature to the document. No one has noticed so far :=)
- number6 5y ago
  Most people will go with less. Print the page. Signature it by pen. Scan it send it per mail. The other party prints and signature it and send it back. A scanned signature is not a handwritten one and it leaves you with a sub-standart signature. But courts accept it while it even if its not to the letter of the law.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    I was allowed to do that when requesting $5 transcripts from my university registrar's office. When you're buying an apartment for many multiples of that, it's Docusign or nothing.
    - number6 5y ago
      Here in Germany if you are buying an apartment there is a notary who actually reads the whole contract out loud. Then he checks if every party with their ID and then watches over the signatures. No way you could buy an apartment with docusign. Apart from that you can sign most contracts however you like or not at all if you can proof that both parties agreed to the contract e.g. by paying the invoice.
      - rchaud 5y ago
        Docusign is just one part of the process I described, namely the process of making a formal offer. To complete the transaction, you need to have a lawyer look over all the documentation and get their approval first. The lawyers also hold the funds in escrow, and release them only when all parties sign off, and the keys are handed over. Most people will also purchase title insurance in case the current owner has liens on the property that the lawyers did not find.
solresol 5y ago
It depends entirely on the jurisdiction. In Australia for example, any technology that is accepted by both parties can be used. I have signed contracts with GnuPG (a long time ago) for example. I have also sent documents to my Remarkable tablet, signed them there and sent them back without it ever being on paper. Who is the "other party" to this contract? What forms of signature will they accept?
brianwawok 5y ago
Sign a piece of paper and scan it. No cost.
- ipince 5y ago
  Who has scanners (and printers) these days? And going to Fedex to print/scan is a cost too.
  - throwaway2048 5y ago
    take a picture of it
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    every business I've dealt with. Even some grocery stores have a xerox machine in the back office.
- nwatson 5y ago
  Docusign and other services like it do more than send out forms to collect signatures. There often are other fields / data collected, alternative forms of documents presented depending on target party's profile, etc. If you take the sign/scan/send form, the receiving company still needs to do all the work to put that form in the right place and perhaps extract further data for further steps in some data pipeline. Docusign et al will presumably integrate straight into your document flow, much simpler in the long run with fewer people. Just to put one alternative company into the fray, there's Docsmore (https://client.docsmore.com/features.html https://client.docsmore.com/features.html), a local startup (North Carolina) that offers document management / signing / document flow as a service. I'd imagine it would be hard to go up against a giant like Docusign unless there are compelling additional features. The Docsmore founders seem to have more recently used the service as a jumping-off point for a separate insurance claims-processing automation company, Benekiva (https://www.benekiva.com/ https://www.benekiva.com/) (Iowa/North Carolina). That seems even more lucrative than straightforward document signing/data-collection. EDIT: I have no relation to the company, I've met some of the founders before
funstuff007 5y ago
A Docusign hack would be downright amazing. Among other things, you'd probably get to see how much big oil pays direct to dictators, or (more likely) the entities they control.
- salade_pissoir 5y ago
  It seems unlikely that a big oil company would rely on Docusign for serious skulduggery. They'd send couriers and the like for that.
mtlynch 5y ago
I haven't found free, open-source solutions, but HelloSign[0] is a decent solution if you only need to sign documents a few times per year. Their free tier supports three documents per month. They make it look like they only have paid plans, but you can sign up without a credit card for a free tier. [0] https://www.hellosign.com/ https://www.hellosign.com/
- rubyfan 5y ago
  These open source solutions aren’t explicitly for PDF signing but they can in theory be combined with PDF.js https://github.com/brinley/jSignature https://github.com/brinley/jSignature https://github.com/szimek/signature_pad https://github.com/szimek/signature_pad
  - mdavidn 5y ago
    IANAL, but the value of a service like DocuSign is being a third-party whose records the counterparties cannot manipulate.
    - rubyfan 5y ago
      Agree. I think if the solution is auditable you’re OK. Many companies take first party accountability for capturing recurring credit card consent from customers and store the “proof” as an auto able document.
- cowpig 5y ago
  I use hellosign in my business, it works fine.
  - acjohnson55 5y ago
    We use Hellosign at my employer for probably hundreds of thousands of docs per month. I'm neither recommending for or against them; just saying they're absolutely a viable option.
- yojo 5y ago
GDC7 5y ago
Oh it's a long story...where to begin? It all started in 2006 when the economy grew at 6.6% in Q3 and the Fed still claimed that not tightening was a great insurance policy. Fast forward: Subprime crisis Bernanke says "subprime is contained" Subprime was not contained Wheels come off in 2008 Everybody runs away like chicken with their heads cut off Everybody goes back to Bernanke asking for solutions Bernanke proposes QE, something that he claims "works in practice, but not in theory" Slow recovery More panic More QE Temper Tantrum More QE 13 years of regular QE 2 years of QE on steroids due to COVID Asset prices only go up Everything bubble And here we get to the current scenario where scam companies are worth trillions and Docusign is worth 50B
- smcl 5y ago
  What scam companies are worth trillions?
  - ChrisClark 5y ago
    He thinks Tesla is a complete scam for one thing... Probably not a good idea to spend time on any of his comments.
    - smcl 5y ago
      Hm ok, well while I don't think Tesla can really be called a scam I definitely think it's overvalued
      - rvnx 5y ago
        Can we talk about Dogecoin and similar ?
        smcl 5y ago
        With Dogecoin and friends we're entering scam territory. But really I was curious because it sounded like the GDC7 was suggesting there were multiple trillion-dollar scam companies. The reason I commented was that while I think there are a lot of ridiculously valued companies, I'm not so sure we can consider many of them a "scam".
niftylettuce 5y ago
Working on an open source alternative, email me at niftylettuce@gmail.com if you want to try the beta. We're the team behind https://forwardemail.net https://forwardemail.net Everything 100% transparent, open-source, privacy-focused, with fair pricing
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  While I personally have no direct use for it, forwardemail looks like an amazing service. I'm just wondering about the commitment that you will never increase prices - that seems kind of unsustainable? Even if cost goes down over time, inflation tends to move pretty fast these days, quickly eroding your real earnings.
- bbarn 5y ago
  Can I ask how this is an alternative to DocuSign? I like what your product is offering - actually something I've considered as I use a built in forwarder from namecheap and it's sometimes painfully slow, but DocuSign's big business is in electronic signing of documents, right? The only times I've had to use it was buying a house and once signing an offer letter for a job.
  - niftylettuce 5y ago
    FE is not an alternative, we're building something separate with the same team (just a beta, experimental side project).
potatolicious 5y ago
As with many situations with enterprise software vs. roll-your-own solutions (FOSS or otherwise): reliability, responsibility, and liability are the reasons. Most enterprise software is purchased to do something the company requires, but is not within the company's actual line of business. Payroll, tax calculations, identity verification, etc. In these cases "cheap" is not very important so long as the solutions are cheap enough relative to the value of what the company's business. This is also why companies routinely contract out vast amounts of work to highly-paid lawyers - paying someone six figures to do work on a deal that's worth 9 figures is a rounding error, and is not a cost worth optimizing. More importantly, the third party provides two important pieces: responsibility and liability. Docusign is on the hook if they fail to validate the signers' identity, and if anything goes awry Docusign is on the hook for fixing it. These are features, not bugs, to enterprises who need a function performed but really do not want the liability or responsibility around it. This is similar to why tech companies outsource to cloud services rather than run on their own metal.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  >and is not a cost worth optimizing. Well, it's kind of like plumbing. Once established, you don't think about it much until something goes wrong. Maybe someone notices, "Hey, our annual maintenance is $x, but I think the normal rate is only $x-y." But unless it's time for a lot of belt tightening, making that change is pure risk if the system mostly works, problems are fixed quickly, etc. Because maybe you change plumbers, and there's a catastrophic failure that would have happened anyway, but now via the magic of post-hoc fallacies it looks like the change is what caused the problem. (And maybe it did! who knows?) So there are many things in any organization that only get optimized/updated (or even just simple maintenance) when they become a noticeable problem. The old adage about not fixing what isn't broken-- you need to really be able to show a likely failure in order to make a preemptive change.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    As a side note, this can be a good thing. When a certain amount of change aversion isn't maintained, you get change for change's sake. Organizationally, you get every new manager trying to "make their mark" on things. Individually, you get developers trying to add "migrated product to $X shiny new framework" to their resume for their next job hop in 2-3 years. But many/most of us have probably also worked in environments that were far too conservative about changes, so that may be the more common problem.
kosolam 5y ago
So why is it 50b company?
codingdave 5y ago
> legally binding way to put signatures and timestamps on a PDF. IANAL, but the idea that a signature is what makes a contract legally binding is not exactly true. It is a symbol of the acceptance of the contract, but legal acceptance can take many forms - so whether you use a service to signify acceptance, or just sign it using acrobat or Adobe's site, or even just a verbal agreement... those are all valid acceptance, legally speaking. DocuSign's use case is not the signing, but the management of those documents and signatures - tracking which documents are sent, which have been read (yes, the doc owner can get notified when you even look at a Docusign document), which have been signed, and being able to store copies of signed docs. It is mostly for the companies sending you contracts, not for you as the signer.
- dsizzle 5y ago
  I've signed PDFs digitally overlaying a digital version in Preview on a Mac, which is free -- for all parties. I'm not sure how much more legal wiggle room there is for that version vs Docusign. Either way, as noted, DocuSign has other features.
  - crummy 5y ago
    This is my favourite lifehack. I don't own a scanner and signing docs can be a pain without it. A very few places will reject the Preview-signed copy, wanting a hand signature, but you can filter the pages a bit (tilt slightly, add noise) and they won't know the difference.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - vosper 5y ago
      If you own a smartphone Adobe's free document scanner is quicker and easier to use than a normal scanner. And it's totally fine for legal documents like contracts (having just used it for that)
    - garmaine 5y ago
arrakis2021 5y ago
Enterprises generally don’t want or care about open source software.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Unless it pertains in some way to their core business, which for the most part will only be the tech driven ones. And something like documents signatures is so inherently based on trust that unless it was built by a large company and made open source. Instead, the pathway to trust was decades of slow growth and bootstrapping (of trust) from a small startup DocuTouch, acquisition, investment in legal analysis and lobbying, a few key early partners, etc... And then you find yourself as the defacto trusted vendor. Note that I'm putting aside questions of security etc. Assuming no wide-scale high-profile breach or fraud, actual security in this space is secondary. Legal acceptability is more important, especially since any moderately complex contract is going to have other stages and processes that ensure the correct parties are the ones signing the contract. Or at least be no worse than similar risks IRL. Legally binding, court-accepted levels of trust are simply orthogonal to the goals of open source software. However, we're now at a point in the acceptance of digital signatures that a startup that happens to open source its code could still disrupt the market. The most around any such business would be the expensive legal expertise and legal bills required to defend their products in court when they are inevitably questioned in contract disputes or possible frauds.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
Because the market is batshit insane right now. Been investing for 30 years (started right after the Savings and Loan Scandal bust in the late 80's), and the insanity dwarfs the Dot Com bubble. People who don't understand the basics of investing always joke about how it is a casino, and that was always a little true, but now it is massively true.
- bad_username 5y ago
  What advice would you give today for someone who is sitting on some cash but looks to begin investing it?
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    ETF index funds if you don't want to think too hard about it and don't want to hire someone to manage your money. IWF (Russel 1000), IVV (S&P500), VNQ (Vanguard real estate) to name a few. Just trickle money in and forget about it. If you want to be a little more thoughtful map out the cap/growth 3x3 grid from Morningstar with ETFs. Remember: you won't be selling anything until you retire, which will probably be 40+ years from now. Goal isn't stonks or diamond hands or any of that inane b.s., it is about safe stable investments so that you can enjoy life after your primary career comes to a close.
roeschger 5y ago
First a disclaimer: I am no lawyer, but I am one of the co-founders of Skribble[0], an e-signature provider from Switzerland. I don't want to go into details but depending on which country you need your signatures to be legally binding and the type of contract you are signing, you might need a higher signature standard than the one you get from DocuSign. At Skribble we offer all 3 signature standards defined by the European law. The lowest standard is very similar to what you get from DocuSign. Also, at Skribble you get 2 signatures per month for free and a pay-as-you-go model for individuals. I'd be happy if you give it a try at [1]. [0] https://www.skribble.com/en-eu/ https://www.skribble.com/en-eu/ [1] https://my.skribble.com/signup/ https://my.skribble.com/signup/
- dannyw 5y ago
  With all due respect, if you're not a lawyer, you probably shouldn't make suggestions that your solution may be more legally binding than DocuSign. The same way I'm not going to take any claims from the product manager of a new VPS company that they're more secure than AWS.
- rdpintqogeogsaa 5y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm no lawyer, either. It seems that DocuSign has been suiting up on eIDAS signatures, too[0]; I'm not sure if they're compliant with the Swiss snowflake ZertES though since that one's incompatible with eIDAS. [0] https://www.docusign.co.uk/how-it-works/electronic-signature/digital-signature https://www.docusign.co.uk/how-it-works/electronic-signature... ("Easiest-to-use, eIDAS compliant digital signature solution, including EU Advanced and EU Qualified Signatures")
revorad 5y ago
I use https://www.signwell.com https://www.signwell.com. It works really well and the free tier is enough for infrequent use.
vsenko 5y ago
Now really sure that it'll help you, but in Kazakhstan digital signatures can be legally significant (have equal significance as hand-written signatures) in case if several requirements are met. One of the requirements is that certificate has to be issued by accredited CA. And there is one such CA - National CA (https://pki.gov.kz/ https://pki.gov.kz/), it issues such certificates for free. Also there is a service that allows anyone to sign any file using a certificate issued by National CA - https://sigex.kz https://sigex.kz, thus making it legally significant. It's free for use (except for heavy RPS enterprise users and the ones, how need support). So in Kazakhstan you can do e-docs signed by e-signs totally for free. P.S.: Pardon, but the links are in Russian.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  The KZ government PKI has had quite the history: - Kazakhstan man-in-the-middle attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_man-in-the-middle_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_man-in-the-middle_a... - "Certificate cannot be trusted" warning in Kazakhstan https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/certificate-cannot-be-trusted-warning-kazakhstan https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/certificate-cannot-be-t... - Kazakhstan Attempts to MITM Its Citizens https://www.f5.com/labs/articles/threat-intelligence/kazakhstan-attempts-to-mitm-itscitizens https://www.f5.com/labs/articles/threat-intelligence/kazakhs...
tibbetts 5y ago
Because there is a natural monopoly in being a trusted provider of legal transaction services. Both for integrations and for the fact that no one wants to risk their job saving a few dollars on digital signatures. And no one wants to explain to a future acquirer / legal inquiry / judge / whatever that they are using some weird alternative. “We process the contracts with Docusign” is a safe thing to say. If that wasn’t good enough, a whole lot of other people would also be in trouble, so the collective hallucination that is our legal system will support it.
- runnr_az 5y ago
  100% agree. We looked at sourcing different providers for a project, but for things involving trust, the known brand is an easy choice.
programmarchy 5y ago
esignatures.io could be a nice solution. I’ve used them for client projects and they have a simple API, too. They have a $0.49 per contract pricing model.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
My guess - DocuSign has a hard to penetrate moat: It's known and accepted in courts. Everything else doesn't really matter. Imagine you're a legal department. You have to choose between DocuSign, which you know the court will accept, or a competitor. DocuSign costs 10x as much as the competitor. But that's nothing compared to the cost of litigation, or worse, the cost of losing litigation. So you will likely choose DocuSign anyways.
- killingtime74 5y ago
  Which courts? In which jurisdiction? Never heard of this. I’ve only heard of special status being according to government run digital signature schemes
  - reilly3000 5y ago
    A regular digital document can be called into question in court with some concern for digital manipulation. Chain of custody, cryptographic signing, audit logs, etc help establish vendors as trusted in legal disputes. It’s nothing particular to them, it’s just compliance with UETA and ESign laws as well as state/local standards in the US. As much as vendors like DocuSign provide UX and infrastructure for document management, they also package an aspect of legal compliance as a service.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  It’s a turnkey platform that’s ready to go for most verticals. I helped implement a solution during the peak period of pandemic that ended up handling millions of transactions. Probably took 3 days from handshake to live.
- adventured 5y ago
  > DocuSign has a hard to penetrate moat It's the same reason Coinbase, Square, Stripe, Airbnb (among many others) are worth what they are (ie rich multiples on sales). Their domains are extraordinarily difficult to do very well and now that large competitors are in place (in those segments) it's borderline impossible to take a big chunk of the market away from them. They're entrenched, potential future monopolist tech monsters. The market loves these types of stories, right up until the growth inevitably declines to/near single digits and then they get a boring eBay valuation (circa ~2003-2019). The short of it is, a lot of the future returns have been pulled forward.
rightisleft 5y ago
Unrelated to open source, but DocuSign is literally one of the examples i list when explaining why the tech sector is over bought. They've tripled their market cap since the beginning of the pandemic, and while there is some merit to work from home, their moat is laughable. There are plenty of alternatives to DocuSign that should make share holders terrified... Adobe Sign, Panda Docs, HelloSign - i wouldn't even bet against notarize.com Someone is going to roll a decentralized ID system on blockchain and tank this whole sector...
- nemo44x 5y ago
  A better business would be to sell an API that is legally sound for signing documents. Then everyone could implement the functionality in their own tools as a feature.
  - humanistbot 5y ago
    Docusign effectively does this with all of its integrations. If you run on Salesforce, it's really well integrated. And if not, they have a great API. You can programmatically generate an https link and send that to your customers as part of your existing workflow. You email them a link or even just open up a new tab / overlay a browser. They can log in with various SSOs, they sign the form, then come back to the next stage in the workflow. Edit: see https://www.docusign.com/products/apis https://www.docusign.com/products/apis
    - nemo44x 5y ago
      And there we go - why DocuSign is a 50b business. Sounds like OP doesn’t understand the complexity.
      - rvnx 5y ago
        Can you replicate DocuSign if you were given 50B USD ? Well, then you know if it's overvaluated or not :o)
teeray 5y ago
A zoom recording with a witness involved maybe?
xn 5y ago
I don't know what's legally binding in your jurisdiction, but in the US, scribbling on a PDF will suffice for most purposes. xournal++ is a free tool that will support this.
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
I paid for DocuSign's annual fee the year I bought my house because it was just that much easier to sign everything electronically. The only documents I signed in person were at the closing. Everything else was done electronically, which was beautiful. I have to admit, over the past two years I've run into two pieces of professional software that made me think, dang, this thing actually works and is a material improvement on the old state of affairs. One was Fusion 360 and one was DocuSign. (I say this as a casual user of both relevant categories of software.) I don't know if this makes it worth $50B, but they have a happy customer in me.
960design 5y ago
The US has had an Electronic Signature law since 2000: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-106publ229/pdf/PLAW-106publ229.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-106publ229/pdf/PLAW... tl dr; Typed signatures are legal in a digital form if the form states this is a signature block. There is no need for a third party such as docusign. Further verification standards have been adopted, but not required, to identify typed signatures. The most common is the leading "//". So my legal signature would look like this: //William Hagan
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
trebligdivad 5y ago
It's $50B because lots of people trust it to do something that is easy to understand and lots of the people trading have used it. The difficulty with replacing it by something open is that you need to host it somewhere securely, and you need to make it externally visible to have 3rd parties sign stuff And you need to get all your auditing spot on so that in 5 years time you can show that 'yes, Bob did sign that contract, so can we have $... from him'; which probably means it can't be hosted by you, but needs to be something an external party can audit. And the signing process has to be simple enough that managers/lawyers/CEOs can use.
elil17 5y ago
If you want to e-sign lease agreements, you don’t need any special software. You can just have the signee type their name in the signature space and email the document back to you. The date of the email will be evidence of the timestamp, and the email records are commonly accepted in court. That’s just as legally binding as Docusign. The reason people use Docusign is to keep track of a large number of legal ageeements.
- yellow_lead 5y ago
  Right, you can even sign (drawn signature) a PDF with Acrobat or Foxit or Libre, return it over email, and it's binding.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
    Which is why it’s infuriating when someone requires a “wet” signature - AFAIK it’s not more binding than above, so why are you forcing me to print something out, sign it and scan it?
    - yellow_lead 5y ago
      I also wonder how they'll know. It's funny - almost like "if you cant tell it wasn't reasonable to ask in the first place."
    - supertrope 5y ago
      Inertia. Lack of knowledge. This problem feeds off itself. If both parties agree to sign electronically it’s valid. In a population of luddites adoption remains low because they’re worried other luddites or cautious people don’t accept electronic documents. One silver lining to Covid is that businesses have been forced to adapt by moving up their digital workflow deployments or go out of business.
- beervirus 5y ago
  Although be aware that the specifics of what is acceptable vary from state to state. To say nothing of non-US jurisdictions.
redthrow 5y ago
I thought an email exchange where both parties reached an agreement is a legally binding contract, even without the use any document singing apps like Docusign. Is there any jurisdiction where it isn't? Companies use and pay for a lot of technically unnecessary things.
mooreds 5y ago
In somewhat the same situation. We need to sign docs electronically about 2x a year. I use hellosign. Free for the first 3 docs you sign a month. WFM.
taf2 5y ago
Checkout hellosign much more approachable IMO. It has a free trial maybe you can get by with just that…
sterlinm 5y ago
These are documents that you’re signing or that you’re collecting? I use the built-in signature tool in Preview on MacOS all the time without issue. If you’re the one collecting the documents I guess it depends on whatever the regulations are in the industry that you’re in. You might check out Docassemble. It lets you build workflows for creating documents from questionnaires. https://docassemble.org/ https://docassemble.org/ It can do signatures too. https://docassemble.org/docs/questions.html https://docassemble.org/docs/questions.html
IncRnd 5y ago
> Are there free, open source alternatives to Docusign? If so, why do more companies not use them? Unfortunately, trust doesn't come for free. If a random, free-to-use company is used as a root-of-trust for document signing, who would trust that? It is a meaningless party to trust. There needs to be a reason to trust.
wenbin 5y ago
Businesses are willing to pay premium price for peace of mind. As an individual, we certainly would think twice to spend $xxx/month. But as a business, the psychology of money is totally different.
LatteLazy 5y ago
If interest rates are 10%, you can borrow $1000 and buy a company that generates a $100 dividend and be cash neutral. Make sense? Now if interest rates drop to 1% you can spend $10k on the same company, get the same $100 and pay your loan. So the value of a company that reliably generates $100 can change by a factor of 10 when interest rates change. Right now, the real interest rate is basically zero. So to determine what a company is worth, work out how much capital it generates and divide by almost-zero. Hence why every company is work billions...
- s-c-p 5y ago
  I don't get it, I am new to finance, what concepts should I learn before I can understand your comment?
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    The concept here is Net Present Value (NPV). I don't really know of a list of such concepts, I've just cobbled together enough to be wrong for a good reason :)
anm89 5y ago
I don't think anyone believes from a traditional value perspective that it is. There are two elements to the stock markets: 1) The traditional element in which people attempts to buy and sell companies at good values to produce a return 2) The portfolio construction, pure supply demand element. People have money sitting around and they need to try to find a way to at least protect that money from inflation so they have to try to put somewhere. And there are really only so many options, real estate, commodities, debt securities and equity securities. Most of the time people are generally just deciding between debt and equity (bonds and stocks). Right now, debt is historically unattractive so everyone is in equities because it's better than bonds. ETFs further entrench this because most of the retail market is just dumping their money into things like "growth ETFs" that are going to buy things like Docusign because it's sector is "tech" regardless of if any of those people would actually personally invest in that company. This is somewhat crazy sounding but it's not necessarily irrational. You do have to pick one of those categories if you want to at least try to not lose money to inflation and if everyone of them sound terrible you start looking for the least terrible.
- Kranar 5y ago
  This explanation is too vague to be of any use. You can apply this argument to any company whatsoever, in which case all tech companies should be worth $50B. The question is why is Docusign, specifically, valued at $50B while other tech companies, even those that are publicly traded, are not valued at $50B.
  - anm89 5y ago
    Right, every medium and large tech stock is trading at ridiculous multiples with very few exceptions. Thats the whole point. Obviously when describing a factor in the stock market your goal isn't to list every single influence but this one influence far and away dominates tech stock valuations
thesausageking 5y ago
Enterprise customers are very sticky. Once a large company has standardized on a tool like Docusign, it's very hard to get them to change because it involves changing the behavior of thousands of people. No CIO wants to deal with that. It's not worth risking the new tool won't have a feature a group depends on, the CEO doesn't using it, or, after switching, it has an outage. At this point, Docusign has reach the "No one got fired for using Docusign" threshold, so it will be around a long time. And now that they have a huge user base, they're going to use that push out whatever new products and features they can. And because document signing is used by basically every department in every industry, there's a lot of things they can add: https://www.docusign.com/products https://www.docusign.com/products
cft 5y ago
Because America has shifted from manufacturing economy to DocuSign economy. Soon people will find out that 50bn is new 50m though.
grepfru_it 5y ago
I've used esignforms[0] to DIY document signing, its a bit complex to setup but what stands out to me is that the own authors do not endorse the software for legal purposes because the software has not been audited. [0] https://github.com/OpenESignForms/openesignforms https://github.com/OpenESignForms/openesignforms
hk1337 5y ago
One thing DocuSign has going for it and against it is its name recognition. Right now, a lot of places say they require DocuSign and for some places they are pretty rigid and inflexible so it really does have to be DocuSign but a lot of places just want the same security and authority DocuSign has to offer so the brand "DocuSign" is kind of becoming like "Kleenex" or "Coke" where people do not really care that it has to be DocuSign, they're just referring to the product offering.
isalmon 5y ago
If you need recommendations - I'm using this: https://www.sejda.com/sign-pdf https://www.sejda.com/sign-pdf
jamesmishra 5y ago
Docusign is worth so much because--for their biggest customers--they effectively act as the entire operating system for the legal department. If you are a small customer, then you have not purchased the same experience. Docusign has competitors, but every company in the space has a powerful incentive to move upmarket instead of providing basic features to small companies. Docusign has some content marketing that hints at all of the features they sell to large enterprises. https://www.docusign.com/blog/what-is-contract-lifecycle-management https://www.docusign.com/blog/what-is-contract-lifecycle-man...
burnte 5y ago
HelloSign. Great product, every bit as good, if not better than DocuSign. Every bit as valid and accepted. Very inexpensive. Their support, however, is literally the worst support experience I've ever had.
- GycDH6mb 5y ago
  If you don't mind my asking, what could be improved? I work in engineering but would like to send the feedback over to our customer support team. Unfortunately, a large portion of HelloSign's customer support team was affected by a reduction in force earlier this year, because Dropbox didn't want to pay salaries for support staff in high cost of labor areas, like San Francisco.
  - burnte 5y ago
    I'd be THRILLED to tell you. Shoot me an emal at grey@hodge.be and I'll tell you everything. I love the product, been a fan of Dropbox for ages, and if I can help you help someone else improve the experience, maybe Docusign can get real competition.
ajaimk 5y ago
https://esignatures.io https://esignatures.io https://www.cheapesignature.com https://www.cheapesignature.com
goatherders 5y ago
This is a great example of understanding a market. An engineer might think that a document management platform should have a great UX/UI and lots of bells and whistles. But that stuff is secondary to "a court will accept it." THAT is the product differentiator for DocuSign. "We are a document management platform that courts will accept." BOOMTOWN.
oyebenny 5y ago
Which competitors does DocuSign have?
satya71 5y ago
SignWell (https://www.signwell.com/ https://www.signwell.com/) has a free plan for simple needs.
spullara 5y ago
I call these kinds of companies commodity monopolies. Anyone could build them but now that one has emerged a winner there is so little difference between them you might as well use the one everyone else uses. Okta and PagerDuty are other examples.
Spikeysash 5y ago
Pandadoc is free
hnbear 5y ago
Far more than just the cost of implementation and selling that, they're also selling the incredible savings of not having to track and sign documents manually. For a company with a heavy legal, purchasing, or HR department, all of which are very document heavy, having everything automated and electronic saves a ridiculous amount of people-hours and effort. Actual signed contracts need physically storing (securely), especially in regulated environments, they need passing around, they need to be discovered. Just searching for old contracts is a terrible waste of time and money. Moving to an all electronic environment allows big savings in not needing a bureaucracy around that document management. Regular members of those departments can get docs distributed, signed, stored, and recalled trivially. After a year of companies all working remotely, the savings alone of not physically mailing documents around must be a huge chunk of that estimate. If you've ever bought a house, gotten through immigration work with lawyers, signed corporate purchasing agreements, etc. you'll have seen the thick wads of paper that need over-nighting between companies at crazy expense. Having looked at both DocuSign and HelloSign recently, DocuSign seems to have the better integrations into more corporate systems, and was preferred by our docs heavy departments. Personally I use Preview on macOS and have never had anyone reject my signature for anything.
- rjha 5y ago
  >incredible savings of not having to track and sign documents True that. The technical debates on HN on miss the point of why people feel the need to use DocuSign. If only two parties are involved, I will print, put my signature and send the scan. This is what I will do despite having a DocuSign account. multi party agreements and especially the ones where you are the one needing others signatures (e.g. share holder agreement) and DocuSign are a match made in the heaven. It can send reminders to parties, show you who to nudge and let you download the final version. Compare that to print and put signature workflow.
matchagaucho 5y ago
The US eSign Act is a good read. Its only 3 pages, but gives an idea of what is required for compliance in the US. The top solutions in this market must know the sSign compliance rules in many countries, and industry-specific compliance within each country. Long-tail eSign solutions that are able to focus on a specific industry, country, or niche are more likely to charge per transaction, or a low subscription fee. So for your lease agreement use case, the Lenders/Landlords likely have several SaaS options at their disposal for one-off transactions. https://www.fdic.gov/resources/supervision-and-examinations/consumer-compliance-examination-manual/documents/10/x-3-1.pdf https://www.fdic.gov/resources/supervision-and-examinations/...
- comex 5y ago
  Nitpick: The document you linked to is a summary of the eSign Act. At the beginning is a link to the eSign Act itself, which is 14 pages.
reilly3000 5y ago
Certainly the value of transactions that are authorized each month by DocuSign are north of $100B, and they alleviate a substantial about of transactional friction and risk. There is also a network effect in that accessing existing agreements establishes a relationship with all parties to these contracts. Personally I give little credence to questions about tech valuation. Either it’s rational or irrational, and that is up to each and every investor to decide and literally nobody else.
edmundsauto 5y ago
Because brands matter. They somehow cracked the nut of getting legal professionals to sign off on their service. Now, when the service costs very little compared to the context, why would you chose anything other than what your attorney recommends?
winrid 5y ago
Fun technical fact - as of a few years ago they were only signing about a million documents a day. It's all marketing / enterprise entrenchement.
nhumrich 5y ago
For what it's worth, DocuSign is actually free to sign your own documents. You only have to pay to send it to someone else. The UI around the free versionis absolutely terrible.
sadfev 5y ago
It’s a bubble. All tech are trading at high valuations due to infinite money printing. Docu’s fundamental business is worth $5B at best.
geuis 5y ago
I can only really speak to my early experience with them as a young company. They made internet fax bullshit easy. When I could easily store my signature and sign docs, then later when they added pdf interpretations, I was sold 100%. They still do those basic features. But the product has become more complex over the years. Not sure where I stand now.
conductr 5y ago
I use docusign as you described, as landlord for a few properties, and I don’t pay anything. Somehow it falls under the free tier/limit. That said, I’ve seen my employers discuss the high cost of the service. Usually they go with it because it’s the dominant player/trust and by the time they’re worried about costs it’s highly integrated into many workflows in many departments and difficult to move away from.
jspaetzel 5y ago
It's a service every company needs and most aren't willing to build. This is in large part because most companies don't have the security expertise to handle sensitive data so it makes tons of sense to outsource. Even the companies that do have that expertise may not want to invest their resources outside their core business. The important thing to consider is how much would it cost you to build/deploy a solution to send and request signatures from clients? Lawyers, developers, and security professionals are all needed and can quickly push the cost to build much much higher then paying for a service. As for the valuation, it's also high in part because the market segment is so large.. anyone and everyone doing business online is a potential customer. Disclaimer: I work for HelloSign. My experience here is from having seen many companies try to build it themselves only to return as customers a few months later.
- dannyw 5y ago
  Also the legal headaches when a counterparty claims that you forged the signature, or manipulated the contract?
  - tthun 5y ago
    if you implement a Digital Signature over eSignature, this issue goes away - both parties can get a copy of the signed document and never be manipulated
  - jspaetzel 5y ago
    There's different levels of e-signatures, for various circumstances. The most sophisticated includes having an agent video chat with you and verify your identity when signing. If that won't hold up, then you'll probably have problems with an in person wet signature too.
gnicholas 5y ago
One of the things I dislike about DocuSign is there’s no linkage to the document used to create the PDF you’re supposed to sign. I was once sent a DocuSign email by a large/seemingly reputable company, and I read through it to make sure it was what I expected. It wasn’t — they had edited a key provision, in a way that favored them. Most people don’t read through DocuSigns, partly because the platform makes them difficult/impossible to word search. It would be great if every email from DocuSign included a Word doc of the agreement you’re being asked to sign. Otherwise the platform can be manipulated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of how hard it is to review documents on the platform. You might be able to argue that you had not truly assented to the modified provision, using emails exchanged back and forth to show what the parties had agreed to prior to the DocuSign email. But it would be an uphill battle to prove this, so it’s always better to not have your signature on a document whose provisions you don’t agree with (IAAL).
- dannyw 5y ago
  I hope you (or your client) chose to cease all dealings with that counterparty...
someonehere 5y ago
I hate Docusign charging to use SAML. Biggest scam any company can do. “Pay us an arm and a leg to provide better security on your account.”
jasonwilk 5y ago
You can easily sign a document on Preview using Mac for free. Click the Show Markup Toolbar in the View or Edit section. Create and save your signature, then click the signature to add it to your PDF. I’m not sure why they don’t make this incredibly transparent on Mac, other than to help others profit.
dboreham 5y ago
Perhaps because dollars are worth less now.
tthun 5y ago
There are two main aspects solved by Docusign - Implementation of ESign Act - there are specific requirements that needs to be met for an E-Signature to be valid, such as Informing the signers of an option to opt out, retention of signature records etc. - Non-Repudiation features using Digital signatures - this is where Docusign (and hellosign and friends) is clever in using a LTV Enabled [0] Digital Signature on signed documents that allows the documents to be validated in Adobe reader. This IMHO allows them to get around lot of retention and compatibility requirements of eSign act. Adobe Digital signature verification is visual and you don't need an audit of your SaaS vendor to verify that the electronic signatures made will be available to validate 10 years later. keep in mind, Adobe requires a certificate issued by one of the ATL member issuers [1] - this is adding to the moat these companies have. [0] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26090558/what-does-not-ltv-enabled-mean https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26090558/what-does-not-l... [1] https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/approved-trust-list1.html https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/approved-trust-list1.html Unfortunately if you need a digital certificate solution you are stuck with purchasing a document signing certificate from one of the ATL issuers [1] and Digitally signing your documents with a visible signature.
number6 5y ago
There is ZealID[0] - which gives you a free QES (legally its equivalent to a handwritten signature and has to be accepted all over europe. And there is easyID[1]. Who are similar to docusign but with a per signature fee (around 10cent). They also habe a nextcloud integration [2] [0]https://www.zealid.com/en/consumers https://www.zealid.com/en/consumers [1]https://eideasy.com/ https://eideasy.com/ [2]https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/electronicsignatures https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/electronicsignatures
andy_ppp 5y ago
Adobe appear to have a solution that I used for free that is a webapp. And also I think there is a way in Preview to do this too.
xfour 5y ago
FYI since you mention Lease Documents. Specifically for Lease Documents Zillow has an upload and sign ( or in some states a free lease builder ) you don’t have to list a property just go straight to the leases section
geophile 5y ago
DocuSign is obviously crap. When I first encountered it, I couldn’t believe that anyone took it seriously. The only security is that you got the document at your email address. My brother was scammed as a result of this lax security. A crooked business partner set up a plausible email address for him, and took out a loan in his name. He only found out when he started getting notices about missed loan payments.
- detaro 5y ago
  How did it go fighting that fake loan?
  - geophile 5y ago
    All good, but it took a while, and I think he got the ex-partner to pay his legal fees. The local DA said that a prosecution was unlikely though. Revenge would have been nice.
bennyp101 5y ago
Signable have a path plan
lxmorj 5y ago
I use SignNow.com - the level of subscription I need is something like $8/mo. However, I probably use it less than 1/3 of the months that I pay for. This is true for dozens of memberships: Adobe, Canva Pro, Netflix, HBOMax, The Economist, etc. It'd be nice to have a service that automatically unsubscribes me after every use, but rejoins seamlessly the next time I sign in. If I pay for a month of Netflix on Jan 1 and immediately unsubscribe, I'm good to use it until Feb 1. If I don't log in for a week, it'd pay on Feb 8th and unsubscribe again. I'd have til March 8th to watch, and I'd save ~25%. For less frequently used services I might save 50% or more this way.
habosa 5y ago
In every big transaction,” said Leech, “there is a magic moment during which a man has surrendered a treasure, and during which the man who is due to receive it has not yet done so. An alert lawyer will make that moment his own, possessing the treasure for a magic microsecond, taking a little of it, passing it on. If the man who is to receive the treasure is unused to wealth, has an inferiority complex and shapeless feelings of guilt, as most people do, the lawyer can often take as much as half the bundle, and still receive the recipient’s blubbering thanks.” - Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater
- high_byte 5y ago
  wow beautiful. I just read the summary on Wikipedia the plot and symbolism are all great
Rastonbury 5y ago
They sell an enterprise solution for companies that sign thousands of documents a month, the market is huge as every co needs it. They hit the market hard and now appear to have major market share, successfully turning investment dollars into contracts and therefore revenue. I don't agree with other commentors in that they have any sort of moat besides their existing client relationships and brand, same as any incumbent. Looking at the business, it looks like that of Canva, Figma or Shopify, the de facto leaders is newish software categories with massive markets. They aren't as richly valued (in terms of EV/sales multiples) compared to other enterprise software companies despite slightly above average growth rates and an R&D margin 10 percentage points lower than average. In this market, they actually seem cheap or fair-valued based on a quick glance at comparables. For example Asana, is trading at ~60x+ forward revenue, despite being in a more competitive space with much less stickiness (contract signing is more essential than project management).
ricardobayes 5y ago
I don't agree with the motion that there should be free alternatives. Probably 99% contracts that require this level of scrutiny are for-profit so it makes sense to ask for money in exchange of this service. I would be _very_ vary of a free service that takes my contract info that often includes legal names, addresses, SSN, tax info, bank details, etc.
linux_devil 5y ago
You can use Adobe app
pazx 5y ago
Visma Sign is about 1$/sign, check it out. As an accountant, the answer is a lot of companies sign hundreds of documents every month. I alone send around a hundred documents for digital signing every year and I’m not management. Also most solutions are shit right now, so a lot of money to be made from those who can make a good solution.
ncmncm 5y ago
This sort of thing is what they call a Natural Monopoly. It is what the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was created to regulate. The idea is that it is not against the law to have a monopoly, but there is a collection of rules that apply to you if you have one. You have, in effect, chosen to become a public utility, and then you are legally expected to act like one. That act has since largely ceased to be enforced because operators of monopolies prefer that they not be, and tend to control budgets larger than the enforcers'; and because university schools of economics funded by monopolists have invented and promoted threadbare ideologies that interfere with effective enforcement. They have been aided by numerous corrupt judges who are allowed to establish binding precedents ("case law") weakening the law. Thus, abusing monopoly power to eliminate competition is A-OK, provided your prices do not get "too high" until after all competitors have been eliminated and unassailable barriers to entry have been established.
edf13 5y ago
Can we have the correct title here? It’s a question looking for docusign alternatives?
pfp 5y ago
Estonia has had electronic signatures since 2002. Cryptographically signed PDFs (or any files), backed by the government, free to use, and widely used by common citizens. All you need is residency (an ID card) and a cheap USB reader. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature_in_Estonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature_in_Estonia (yes, "free to use" means tax-funded, no need to point this out)
brushfoot 5y ago
To your second question, RocketLawyer has free document e-sign. We've been using them for our contracts for about a year now.
moulidorai 5y ago
Hello, Please add Zoho Sign to your evaluation list. We have a Free plan - 5 documents/month and our API plan is charged per document/signature. We also offer unlimited document signing, tighter integrations, and a reliable technical assistance for all our users. While selecting an e-sign app, users should consider legality of the app's signature and how it complies with their local laws. The market is also overcrowded with over 200+ e-sign apps and decision-makers prefer the most popular ones for these reasons: legality, ease-of use, technical support, scalability, security and privacy. We are just four years into this e-sign space and companies both small and big are loving Zoho Sign. Give us a try. DM for any help. Disclaimer: I work for Zoho
mattowen_uk 5y ago
Hi Akouri, we are the same - we only need digital signatures on an ad-hoc basis, so we use Signable: https://www.signable.co.uk/ https://www.signable.co.uk/ You pay per document, there's no monthly fees.
mackman 5y ago
You might have been on to something. Today it's a $30B company.
sb057 5y ago
Well this post certainly aged well. Context for future readers: the stock price for Docusign fell 40% in one day the week after OP asked this question.
jcun4128 5y ago
Well...
kyawzazaw 5y ago
Maybe you initiated Docusign’s downfall

antjanus 5y ago

I really like it -- lots of legal documents I've signed over the past few years are in DocuSign. Which also means that I have easy storage for my _own_ documents. If I log in, I can see the lease I signed 3-4 years ago, the contract I signed last year, etc. etc. Plus, yeah, you get to see if the other party signed, all the appropriate spots for signing are flagged, the entire audit trail of the document. It's super convenient. Also, it's cheap AF. A personal account is like $10-15 and a business account is $25-45. That's pocket change for the service you get. EDIT: I've worked on document management software. Let me tell you that people will pay bank for document management -- without even the signing part. In any field.

wintermutestwin 5y ago
>Also, it's cheap AF. A pay as you go model would qualify as "cheap AF," but the subscription model can be extremely expensive on a per document basis if you need to do a couple a year.
zz865 5y ago
Until it disappears. I tried to look at my job contract from 5.5 years ago and it no longer exists.
ricardobeat 5y ago
You should not rely on that. Make your own copies. I’ve had work contracts and other important documents all disappear due to custom retention policies.
cunthorpe 5y ago
DocuSign does not cost $10. It costs $10/month, which is waaaay more I’d spend to save past signed documents in the cloud. It’d be “cheap” or an acceptable price if a signed document costed $5. Subscriptions are BS for occasional users.
- manquer 5y ago
  For signing documents or accessing documents you signed you don’t have to pay anything. If you are creating documents to be signed , 10-20$ is insignificant cost even if it is was per document. Most contracts are worth lot more, most lawyers who draft these types of documents costs more . Sending a copy of a physical document by USPS for overnight delivery to couple of people will cost you that much.
ivoflipse 5y ago
For whatever reason with our enterprise license agreement, we pay $7/set of documents. I assumed it was flat fee, but nope. We use DocuSign because FDA requires electronic signatures that follow 21 CFR Part 11. A lot of companies will be very hesitant to roll their own or claim compliance if the supplier (like DocuSign) doesn't claim it's compliant.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Back it up on Google Drive or similar. The document can be deleted.

snowwrestler 5y ago

I don’t think this premise is correct; I don’t know of any evidence that courts accord any special status to Docusign’d documents, over other ways of electronically signing contracts. The concept doesn’t even make sense to me… Docusign is not attesting to the contracts they manage. They’re not an automated notary. They’re just facilitating something that anyone can do themselves: electronically sign a contract. There probably is a “nobody got fired for buying Docusign” effect, but it would be supported by their mindshare, not some special status in courts. The vast, vast majority of Docusigned docs will never end up in a court anyway (most contracts are never litigated).

judge2020 5y ago
Having an audit log of access (both email and IP address) is extremely useful if someone asks "did this person actually perform the e-signature". You can then perform motions regarding whether their email has compromised and, if needed, go to their ISP for IP assignment records to see if their account (mobile or home internet) was assigned to that IP. Docusign being the source of authority for the validity of the original IP<->signature log completes the chain of trust and allows this sort of validity defense to work.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  DocuSign does not have that source of authority exclusively. Competitors also have it.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    I agree, competitors like HelloSign and Adobe Sign are pretty feature-complete and would have just as much brand recognition, and do have these same audit log features that specifically help with verifying the authenticity of documents in court. If I had to guess on why people might still choose docusign, it'd be because Docusign was the first on the scene and has the brand recognition - people are going to recognize it more often than if you mention a lower-marketshare competitor like "PandaDoc"[0]. Another reason is probably how the cost difference between competitors is such a low amount of admin overhead that it doesn't matter if you save a few thousand a year in costs or not. 0: https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/pandadoc-the-e-document-startup-now-valued-at-1b-as-it-closes-a-big-series-c/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/pandadoc-the-e-document-st...
- Teever 5y ago
  I've always felt that this is the kind of service that a government should offer. It seems a little silly to have to pay a private entity for this kind of service and also a bit unreasonable that a private entity like Docusign is so enmeshed with the legal system.
  - sushsjsuauahab 5y ago
    The government can barely keep a port open or bomb a proper target, and we want to give them control over what is true and what isn't?
    - Teever 5y ago
      Would you advocate for the privatization of the entire justice system?
      - rmbyrro 5y ago
        At least where I live, private arbitration is well appreciated: much faster, cheaper and reliable than the judicial system. So, yes, here I'd advocate most of the judicial system to be privatized.
        rectang 5y ago
        Where I live (USA), private arbitration is definitely preferred by many corporations who require it, and despised by the people who are forced into it. See for example, "The Problem of Sexual Harassment and Forced Arbitration": https://www.correiaputh.com/news/problem-sexual-harassment-forced-arbitration/ https://www.correiaputh.com/news/problem-sexual-harassment-f...
        drdaeman 5y ago
        It's not an issue with private arbitration per se, it's an issue of being practically forced into it under unreasonable terms with no alternative options.
88913527 5y ago
I'm almost afraid to ask since it's such a given, but do employees actually get fired for choosing the wrong vendor? I've heard it repeated in quite a few contexts, and I'm unsure if I should interpret it literally. At worst, I would expect the executive has a slightly tarnished reputation for picking what ended up being a bad partner.
RC_ITR 5y ago
Long story short, google FEDramp. Docusign is the only current major e-sign platform that works with the federal government (Adobe is applying). If you have to pick one vendor and there’s even an outside chance you’ll interface with the fed govt, you just choose Docusign.
cormacrelf 5y ago
I haven't read all the legislation in the world on this, but DocuSign has. They have been summarising legislation into their knowledge base, and proudly showing off claims that they satisfy the requirements on their country-specific homepages. For example their page on Australian laws is here https://www.docusign.com/how-it-works/legality/global/australia https://www.docusign.com/how-it-works/legality/global/austra..., and it summarises (almost verbatim) the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 (Cth)'s requirements like so: > A method [...] is used to identify the signer and to indicate the signer’s intention to sign the document; > The method used is as reliable as appropriate for the purposes of the communication or is proven to identify the person and indicate their intention; and > The signer consents to the method used, with such consent allowed to be express or inferred from the circumstances. Guess what? Australian courts apparently accept a name written at the bottom of an email as passing this test as being "as reliable as appropriate" for many situations. The barrier to entry in Australia is essentially zero. Europe has much stricter laws, introduced in the same year, in a two-tier arrangement where the strict version requires something like DocuSign, and moreover that the ability to produce a signature rests in the control of the person it identify, and that person only. (This paper http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MqLawJl/2017/9.pdf http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MqLawJl/2017/9.pdf argues for adopting the European approach in Australia.) A sibling comment identifies the US federal government's requirements as being essentially "we must approve individual e-sig services for use with the federal government", which is insane to me but there you go. > Docusign is not attesting to the contracts they manage ... but they are attesting that they have read the laws about e-signatures, those claims are affirmed by their continued existence, and that's worth a lot of time otherwise spent second-guessing your chosen platform. I knew roughly the position in Australia, but wasn't aware of the European requirements -- DocuSign has done a medium amount of work researching and documenting their compliance to give you peace of mind, and quite a lot of work complying with the stricter laws that are out there. There's nothing in that that is particularly difficult to replicate, i.e. there's no secret sauce, it's just a lot of work. The overall product (works for doing business with anyone you need it to) is more than the sum of its parts.
- dash2 5y ago
  This is a lot of legal knowledge. But not $50bn worth. I'm guessing the real story is DocuSign is trying to worm its way into being a de facto monopoly, maybe by paying enough lobbyists, and the $50bn is the bet that they'll be successful. Multiplied up a bit by the fact that we've been living in a free-money world, where castles in the air get pick-a-number valuations.

bubblethink 5y ago

You severely overestimate the technical ability of people and underestimate the general resistance for all things new. It's not that docusign is rocket science. But once you get various government departments and universities to use your thing, it's hard to move away. Their moat is their customer base.

ryanSrich 5y ago

This is a good reminder that HN is a horrible place for investment advice. Rarely, very very rarely, does the tech being differentiated ever matter. At Docusign’s level, it’s much more about sales and marketing. They’ve been the market leader for years, and even if they slip to 2nd or 3rd place, they’re still a massive multibillion dollar company. I think engineers and technical people often have a hard time truly grasping how absolutely gigantic certain markets are (I struggled with this for years). Docusign’s market is unimaginably large.

neilyio 5y ago
Curious… what helped you cross this conceptual gap?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- imajoredinecon 5y ago
  Working at a startup with a solid but not dramatically-better-than-the-others product, but an amazing sales org, did it for me. (Said startup is now worth many, many billions of dollars)
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  Mostly by building a product and competing in a market where the leaders have horrendous products. HR, Compliance, Corporate Training Software, Healthcare, etc. In terms of pure tech and UX, its almost a disqualifier to have good tech or good design as ironic as that sounds.
adam_arthur 5y ago
Competition and ease of replicability matters a lot in the long run. "Weak Competition" or legacy players are largely irrelevant, which is an important distinction to make. I have no doubt in 10 years there will be numerous ways to sign documents electronically and margins will be thin. Think about cloud storage and other areas with a high amount of competition. All of these things will trend towards margin compression in the long run, almost by definition of being in a competitive/free market. Cost of switching matters a lot too. It's easy to move from DocuSign to some competitor. It's more difficult to move from managed MongoDB to managed Postgres, due to having to define some translation layer. The thing is that we're just early in the digitization cycle so all these first movers becomes pseudo monopolies. That won't last for more than a decade or two. Highly likely that stock performance for a lot of these 20-100x sales stocks will be very poor over the next 10 years. But you may get a good stretch of high returns in the short/medium term. Think about when Ford created the assembly line. Did that give them a forever Monopoly on cheap production of cars? There's this attitude that competition doesn't matter in technology, but we can clearly see in things like laptops, routers, hardware etc, that margins became very low after market got saturated. It's only just the last few years that things like DocuSign were even possible to create. This is especially true for software where once it's built, marginal cost to deliver value is extremely low. Theoretically, a well designed and cloud native/managed version of DocuSign could be run by just a handful of people in the long run. Do people really expect that nobody will accomplish this in the next 10-20 years? Where there's margin, there's opportunity.
hodgesrm 5y ago
This. I would add that tech people and many others also fail to grasp some of the real market barriers to entry. (Well sometimes.) To cite a single example: corporate procurement systems. It's like trench warfare to get enrolled in many companies, but once completed your sales team can then recite the following incantation: "we're an approved vendor." The effect on sales can be magical. ;) Disclaimer: I use Docusign and have done so for years. It's transformative in a way that's similar to password managers.
rightisleft 5y ago
Circling back on this - "DocuSign shares plunge nearly 40% after the company gave weak guidance". Just saying...
- abledon 5y ago
  yes! I was thinking of this thread reading the news today... what a coincidence

rubyfan 5y ago

I hear this a lot, blockchain is going to replace X accepted industry solution. I always go back to, who’s going to invest in actually building the new blockchain solution and for what reason? Big companies pay other big companies like Docusign to figure it out for them and they pay a premium for not having to deal with it themselves. Blockchain as a technology really doesn’t offer a lot of practical advantage over traditional tech in a three party signature system. When I hear startups sell on the fact that their solution uses blockchain and is somehow inherently better for it, I turn and walk the other direction. Same for AI/ML, BigData, etc.

wallacoloo 5y ago
> I always go back to, who’s going to invest in actually building the new blockchain solution and for what reason? blockchain is really hot with VCs these days, so that’s who. why? the rewards for a document signing product are large — as evidenced by new traditional companies entering the space (HelloSign). basing a new competitor in this space off of blockchain offers differentiation. despite being less mature or feature rich, you get prime access to one area of the market that none of your competitors can easily serve. that is, you get your first, profitable, customers way faster and they become a core source of revenue to build out from there.
- rubyfan 5y ago
  I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. That there is money to be made on industry solutions is not in dispute. The point in dispute is that decentralized blockchain based solution makes any sense. Other than to attract VCs who don’t know any better to give you capital, blockchain offers no competitive advantage to an upstart or really a competitive threat to the incumbents. Further I see no desirable “differentiation” for a customer to be interested. It doesn’t in fact even solve a customer problem. It’s just noise.
  - wallacoloo 5y ago
    > Further I see no desirable “differentiation” for a customer to be interested. It doesn’t in fact even solve a customer problem. document signing is just another form of attestation (“i agree to the terms outlined in this document, effective on <date of signing>”. blockchains are really good at providing tools for attestation. the specific customer advantage? it’s extremely difficult for your counterparty to claim that he didn’t sign your term sheet if he changes his mind. you just point to some record on the blockchain and say “this has your digital signature on it. it says you agreed to those terms, and it was published at <date/time>”. obviously, DocuSign solves this problem of attestation, by custodianing the documents and putting meaningful reputation on the line in order to remain trustworthy. OTOH, it’s not unheard of to see for-profit companies cash out their reputation (e.g. big brands which sell the brand/logo to cheap manufacturers once the company stops innovating). attestations on a large blockchain (like Bitcoin or Ethereum) augment that reputational cost with a financial cost: even if Docusign decided to cash out their reputation, it would cost billions of dollars to reverse the attestation: a significant barrier. so it depends on how much you — or the parties you deal with (ex: courts) — trust Docusign. it’s not inconceivable to me that at least a handful of customers might say “i don’t completely trust that any document middleman will not lie about my counterparty’s attestation down the road. but i do trust that blockchain B is secure enough to prevent reversals, so this blockchain-based document signing service might be a better product for me.”
    - rubyfan 5y ago
      You suggest Docusign could compromise their core business and therefore the customer problem is lack of trust in Docusign? So how big is such a market of potential customers that don’t trust Docusign to not tamper with the attestation? I’d hypothesize the potential customer segment is very small. Big companies that need Docusign have incentive enough to get it right and typically have rigorous standards to making decisions like this. If lack of trust were an issue with customers, Docusign will have solved that issue already. Trust is not likely an issue for customers. For choosing a Docusign over a Hellosign, price at scale however is an issue. If blockchain solved the cost at scale issue then you’d be on to something but I don’t think it does. Other tech solutions like S3 or R2 probably have a more material impact on a real customer problem like cost at scale than blockchain could hope to. Though I’d guess the cost Docusign and others charge has little to do with underlying data storage or infrastructure costs.
      - wallacoloo 5y ago
        > So how big is such a market of potential customers that don’t trust Docusign to not tamper with the attestation? I’d hypothesize the potential customer segment is very small. This is sort of my point. This market probably exists, and it's almost certainly too small at the moment for Docusign/Hellosign/etc to consider going after. Which means any nimble startup that wants to can claim that market without much competition. That forms your core set of users, who are sticky to your service, and from whom you can fund development into adjacent markets (e.g. any attestations which are currently secured only by reputation. there's a fair amount of that in the auto industry, in housing/property, and in supply chain management, at the least). I'm not saying that of all the business opportunities around, this is the best one. But it is a business opportunity, in an environment where most other investment opportunities are heavily oversubscribed. > I always go back to, who’s going to invest in actually building the new blockchain solution and for what reason? This was the original line I was responding to. Have we settled it? VCs would be one group to invest, and for the reason that there's an underserved market that no one else appears interested in serving and with the possibility to expand from there. Apparently, neighbor poster has actually already invested in this. So that seems pretty cut and dried to me.
  - knurled99 5y ago
    So my friend and I have actually built a blockchain-based esignature app recently, because there are a couple advantages of using blockchain. One is privacy - you don’t actually have to share the document being signed with our application; we never store it and never have access to it. This is because what is actually signed and stored in the blockchain is a hash based on your document. So if there’s anything sensitive in a doc that you’re signing, there’s no risk of a hacker getting into our app and leaking that to the world. Another advantage is that it gives you a publicly accessible way of proving that a digital file existed in a given state on a given day and time - anyone with the document can later go back and validate that the copy they have is the one that existed on that date and time. The value add of the blockchain is that this information is publicly available on a distributed network that uses encryption and requires agreement among the nodes in the network, so it is functionally impossible to go back and tamper with it later. Couple other advantages, but they aren’t necessarily differentiated by virtue of the app being on blockchain - one is speed and ease of use, because there’s no uploading or recreating digital signatures. You just identify a document to sign, ensure both parties have possession of and wish to sign the same thing, and click to sign. The other is the ability to quickly and easily use our simple REST API to add this kind of e-signature and document verification capability into your own app. This is especially useful for anyone who’d like to memorialize some information in the blockchain but doesn’t want to deal with figuring out how to do that directly. Edited to add the name of the app - Indestamp.com
    - rubyfan 5y ago
      Congrats on making something - I wish you luck. I don’t think blockchain adds anything novel to the functionality you describe. The ability to get a cryptographic hash of a document has existed for a very long time. As have signature files that can be published publicly. As has archive.org. I don’t believe the blockchain adds anything here other than maybe longevity and I’m dubious of even that. FYI - when I click ‘Get started’ nothing happens.
      - knurled99 5y ago
        Ah yes, thanks for pointing that out… this is so new that while the app is working great the website is not fully functional yet. There was a working version on the lab version of our site; we just pushed a change to the main site so the button works now. It just takes you to a sign up form. All valid points about hashes being nothing new, etc. We used blockchain because it was a means to accomplish what we feel is a better way of digitally signing documents. We think there’s value in signing docs on the blockchain and that there’s a need for an easy way to do so, largely among people who are doing other things within blockchain. We are not claiming there’s no other way to skin that cat. I understand why you might run the other way if someone’s claiming their app is great because blockchain. But I also don’t think it’s true that any app that uses blockchain technology adds no value because you could’ve used another technology or simply because blockchain.

sushsjsuauahab 5y ago

That depends-- have you ever had something stolen from you, which you then reported to police, after which nothing happened?

lostcolony 5y ago
Sure, but that isn't the question. Do you prefer mandatory arbitration to being able to use the public court system? That's a privatized justice system.
- sushsjsuauahab 5y ago
  Considering that most cases of theft don't end up in public courts? Yes I'd be happy to go to mandatory arbitration.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Mandatory arbitration is only mandatory by way of the public court system.
  - SahAssar 5y ago
    Mandatory arbitration is mandatory in the sense that it takes the normal justice system away, if as the parent posits the normal justice system does not exist then everything becomes "Mandatory arbitration", right?
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Mandatory arbitration is mandatory in the sense that it takes the normal justice system away No, it is mandatory in the sense that parties will be obliged by the normal justice system to submit to the specified process and will be held bound by the results by the normal justice system (with narrow exceptions.) > if as the parent posits the normal justice system does not exist then everything becomes "Mandatory arbitration", right? No, if the normal justice system does not exist, there is nothing holding anyone to a particular pre-specified arbitration process or enforcing the results of that process.
Teever 5y ago
No, I haven't personally but I'm assuming that you have. If that is the case did you end up hiring a private detective and security force to remediate your circumstance?
- sushsjsuauahab 5y ago
  I did not, but only because in my case the monetary damage was not sufficient to pursue it. I would have liked to have seen those responsible be prosecuted for it, though. If the monetary damage was high enough vis-a-vis the ability of the public system to deliver me restitution for my losses, I'd very quickly be hiring private detectives yes.
  - Teever 5y ago
    How do you imagine the outcome would have been different in a hypothetical world with an entirely privatized justice system?
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      I was in this situation, I lost roughly 2k£. I tried to go to court for 8k£ in small claims which is what the law allowed for as a compensation for the crime. This guy got arrested by the police, he was released and then run away to Dubai where he's from. He came back after a month and opened a company under a false name and started doing the same scam. I knew his address, I reported everything to the police and the police dropped the case without doing anything. I'm already paying 25+k£ in taxes every year. If I didn't have to spend that and there would be no police or laws, private companies (aka burly guys with guns) would be needed to ensure citizens safety, in exchange for a fee. Different private companies would need to interact with each other to settle down cases, eventually agreeing on a set of laws to compensate people subjected to crimes. In this hypothetical world, I would have been happy to pay for my protection agency to go and fetch this individual and bring him to a private court where my protection agency and his protection agency could debate whether the crime happened or not. It was a blatant crime so there was no reason I would lose and that guy should have been forced to return my money (according to laws agreed on by contracts between our private protection agencies) or work in jail until I'm repaid.

jokethrowaway 5y ago
Wow, that guy dodged a bullet by not going with aws free credits. After a year he would have ended up being locked in aws and paying tons more.
- reuven 5y ago
  He did go with the AWS free credits. And then spent a long time getting angry with me and trying not to pay me, because I had supposedly cost him so much, and he wanted to dump the other server company. Sigh.
- sofixa 5y ago
  You aren't necessarily locked in AWS just by using it. Less and less so in fact, with the advent of Kubernetes. Even before that, a "classical" app with an autoscaling group or two, load balancer, and managed database aren't something that will take an enormous amount of time to move to another provider. Basically the main complexity would be transferring the data and the cutover, but you get that regardless of provider.
irq 5y ago
> switch to only doing training Tell us more about this transition? Sounds interesting!
- reuven 5y ago
  I've only been doing Python training for a few years now. I've made more money, had more flexibility, and been happier than at any previous time in my consulting career (which started in 1995). Here are two interviews I've given on the subject: - https://devjourney.info/Guests/83-ReuvenLerner.html https://devjourney.info/Guests/83-ReuvenLerner.html - https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/business-freelancing-episode-54-reuven-lerner-selling-training-clients/ https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/business-freelancing-episo... I'm always happy to talk about training. I love it, and recommend that everyone in the consulting world look into it more. I also have a training newsletter, at https://TrainerWeekly.com/ https://TrainerWeekly.com/.
rkagerer 5y ago
The client told the cloud provider that I had been unauthorized to speak on the company's behalf (untrue) Apropos of nothing, it's funny how nearly every single consulting contract I've seen which has been prepared by an attorney on the client side tries to slip in a clause like "you shall not act on our behalf or hold yourself out as having authority to obligate or bind us", when that's actually exactly what they're looking to hire me to do (eg. "Please come manage our projects, employees, customer relationships, vendors, banking relationships, products, research branch" or whatever else the role entails).
- james_in_the_uk 5y ago
  In legal terms, they’re not exactly the same. You are managing the projects etc. as a service being provided under contract. You are not being granted actual authority to act as an agent of the company. The clause they are slipping in actually protects you both. If you are appointed as an agent (expressly or by implication) then you become a fiduciary for them which might give you obligations that aren’t necessary spelled out in the contract. So, this isn’t a clause most well advised people push back on. If they do still need to sign on behalf of the company in some discreet situations they look into getting a limited power of attorney instead. Safer and clearer for both parties. Not legal advice of course. I assume your own attorney would have explained this to you anyway.
doanerock 5y ago
Yaha he sounds pretty bad at business.

namibj 5y ago

Germany differentiates between "Schriftform" and "Textform". The former is "paper, hand signed" or "qualifizierte elektronische Signatur" (qualified electronic signature), the latter "basically SMS and up" (notably excluding voice, AFAIK even if recorded). This has (just searched for a link) been turned into EU law under the term "eIDAS Regulation" [0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_electronic_signature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_electronic_signature

necovek 5y ago
Qualified electronic signatures are a bit stronger than "SMS and up": from your own Wikipedia link, "a qualified electronic signature is an advanced electronic signature with a qualified digital certificate that has been created by a qualified signature creation device (QSCD)". It mentions 3 requirements right after that sentence (like "data used to create the signature is under the sole control of the signatory"). As such, DocuSign is unlikely to be valid as a qualified electronic signature in Germany or other European countries. But in all of the contractual law ever present in the world, as long as you do not dispute that it's your signature, or there are witnesses to you agreeing to a contract (even verbal ones), a contract would hold as if signed by you.
- necovek 5y ago
  This page confirms it isn't: https://www.docusign.com/how-it-works/legality/global/germany https://www.docusign.com/how-it-works/legality/global/german... > ...the use of electronic signatures or requires that the “written form” be used (which requires use of a qualified electronic signature), then any non-qualified electronic signature may be used. As such, DocuSign is an "electronic signature", but not a qualified electronic signature. This seems to be defined directly in eIDAS, so it probably applies to most of EU countries, and countries on the path to joining the EU.
- detaro 5y ago
  You misread that: "SMS and up" is the description for Textform = the variant that doesn't require a qualified electronic signature.
  - necovek 5y ago
    Ah, right, upon more careful reading, that's indeed so: my apologies!
necovek 5y ago
> As such, DocuSign is unlikely to be valid as a qualified electronic signature in Germany or other European countries. I think this confirms my guess above: https://www.docusign.com/how-it-works/electronic-signature/digital-signature/digital-signature-faq https://www.docusign.com/how-it-works/electronic-signature/d... (But they are making it vague on purpose instead of just stating in plain words)

tjalfi 5y ago
The UK used to have private prosecution. If you're interested in this topic, there's a chapter on it in the book Legal Systems Very Different From Our Own.
smoe 5y ago
How does this hypothetical world not end up with people that can afford to hire the more powerful protection agency be favored in those settlements? Not that I'm happy with the current system, but I can't really see how a privatized one would not end up with an even bigger class divide where the laws are only enforced against people that are on the same level as you or below.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Because private court systems would have a reputation as well. You can also have 3rd party companies auditing and reviewing the system. If a court system is notably unfair, it will lose business. I don't see why corrupting a private judge would be easier than corrupting a public one. The private one at least could default if they had no more business due to their unfairness.
owisd 5y ago
In this hypothetical world you’d be paying way more in protection money than you are currently paying in taxes to the local mafia gang who would have long murdered all the other private protection agencies.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  The local mafia gang would be just one of the private protection agencies with armed forces. There is definitely a competition between them; but is violence or negotiation the most business effective way of dealing with it? Warfare is expensive, you risk men lives and weapons aren't cheap. If there is violence on the street or if protection money is too high, no-one would want to live there and there would be less people to sustain your army. I think the incentives are aligned to solve disputes in a pacific way.
Fazel94 5y ago
You realize you have been treated the same as somebody that 2k was all his belongings and now walked without cash to the private security firm :)))) For what history says about such firms, look up Pinkerton agents and London's policing before the current system.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  The difference is that I'm paying quite a bit for the government. An equivalent would be paying the expensive private security firm subscriptions for 10 years and then expecting service when something bad happens.