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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.

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.
- jjirsa 5y ago
  The “extraordinarily difficult to do very well” part gets ignored here by most people DocuSign’s feature list is huge. It’s not just overlaying a signature on a doc. It’s a massive and complex app that most people will ignore or trivialize, but that shit just works. Mark all the signature locations? Multi-user? Chained dependencies? Recording and redownloading later? SSO Audit / identification Salesforce integration? Contract generation? Orange site minimizing huge successful company because they care about one feature seems super on brand.
  - ajhurliman 5y ago
    I just went through the trouble of researching eSignature companies, and many of them have roughly similar feature sets. We ended up going with HelloSign because their API is a lot more robust. I wouldn't agree that DocuSign's continued success is because of the maturity of the product.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    In terms of features, all the things you listed aren’t technically very impressive. While I recognize their value, a potential competitor could replicate them within a reasonable timeframe. What they couldn’t replicate is the brand name.
    - IshKebab 5y ago
      Lots of technically quite simple things are enough work that people will happily pay a company you do it. Did nobody here learn from the famous Dropbox comment?
      - Aeolun 5y ago
        This is a different point. We’re already talking about a company trying to build the same feature set, not an individual doing it themselves using existing technology.
      - snowwrestler 5y ago
harha 5y ago
Because slow governments didn’t manage to set an open standard for what they require so that every little court can verify if the verification approach is valid, so once again there’s a need to trust a brand name, rather than having fair competition.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  Source authentication is basically an unsolved problem. There are some cryptographic approaches to doing it, but they all basically boil down to moving trust around between different parties. The problem certainly isn’t a lack of government set open standards. The problem described above also doesn’t exist. A signature isn’t a necessary element of a contract, and even in situations where a signature is statutorily required for a certain type of contract, an e-signature is legally recognised (in all US states at least) without specifying that particular service providers or methodologies have to be used.
whirlwin 5y ago
Maybe the wrapping is glorified. But the contents of the document is the most important IMHO
- humanistbot 5y ago
  I assume you're not a lawyer.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  The value DocuSign offers isn’t the display of the original document. It’s the claim that someone “signed” it (by ticking a checkbox) and that somehow this is being accepted by the courts.
  - whirlwin 5y ago
    From experience, the legitimacy or authority of the signer has never been of question in cases brought to court. Maybe it's more relevant in the US, but in 99% of the cases I followed through has been around the interpretation of the actual terms.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Why would they be the only one ‘accepted’ in courts? For instance, when you buy a house you often have to use an escrow service to hold the down payment while the exchange of ownership takes place. Often, these escrow companies are just small local outfits. They are nevertheless trusted with a certain degree of authority and accepted as a neutral facilitator of these transactions by our legal system. In the US many (all?) states license escrow agents to make this work. There should be a similar system for licensing electronic signatures either at the state or federal level. Otherwise the acceptance of one private party over the other amounts to a government-granted monopoly, which goes against how a free society should work.
- IanCal 5y ago
  > Why would they be the only one ‘accepted’ in courts? That's not what they said though, and while this sounds nitpicky it's vital to the point. You can choose between a well known accepted option or something else to save a few bucks. The cost of docusign is, as far as I can tell, low enough that even considering the question for long would easily cost more.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  I'm not claiming they're the only one accepted. But if you say DocuSign, the judge will already be familiar with it. If you say anything else, they might not. And this is not just about one jurisdiction, but also other ones, where e-signature laws may be different.
cowpig 5y ago
What moat? Does Docusign have some special legal status that I'm not aware of?
- 867-5309 5y ago
  the moat at the bottom of Monopoly Hill filled with the tears of those who were beaten to it
  - cowpig 5y ago
    I don't understand what you mean by that. I run a business and I use HelloSign for document signing and it seems like an effectively identical service. I don't see why some other service can't come along and undercut Docusign
TruthWillHurt 5y ago
That's not true. A court will accept emails and documents attached to them. scanned, name typed, or signed with ms-paint - all valid.
- rvnx 5y ago
  I had the case where one person was signing PDF using the annotate / drawing feature. Didn't work in court, the court claimed the contract was invalid (it was the situation of a founder of a company that was raising on a convertible debt).
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    That sounds totally absurd. Unless the stipulation was instead for a wet ink signature I just don't see how this could be the case. You can enter into a contract with even less than a signature (ie: just by accepting payment you can inadvertently end up in a contract), so the idea that a signature wouldn't work except in very specific cases seems pretty weird to me. I've had very few wet-ink, notarized signatures required of me. Some documents are weird though ie: a picture won't be accepted, but a scan will be, etc. God it's all so fucking stupid.
  - late2part 5y ago
    Can you share the Pacer link?
- bdowling 5y ago
  This is basically correct. A court will generally accept a writing into evidence as long as it is relevant and authenticated by a witness or certification.
kingcharles 5y ago
All the court filings I've ever made electronically I've used the (stupidest fucking) system, which is called Conformed Signatures. You basically just type your name and put "s/" in front of it. That's supposed to tell the court you've got an original signed in pen and ink stashed in a drawer somewhere, but the reality is that no lawyer I know of actually has such a thing. https://www.cogencyglobal.com/blog/getting-document-signatures-right-its-not-as-easy-as-you-think https://www.cogencyglobal.com/blog/getting-document-signatur... I've never actually seen a proper esignature in a court document. Most court record systems are so outdated that it's honestly an enormous win if they allow you to view, upload or download documents over the web at all.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  which country / legal system are you describing ? Among nations worldwide, there is a massive disparity in IT and in execution of legal agreements at all, for that matter, I would guess...
  - justusthane 5y ago
    U.S., according to the page the commenter linked.
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...
djbusby 5y ago
HelloSign gives three free docs per month and also works in court.
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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.

jjirsa 5y ago
The “extraordinarily difficult to do very well” part gets ignored here by most people DocuSign’s feature list is huge. It’s not just overlaying a signature on a doc. It’s a massive and complex app that most people will ignore or trivialize, but that shit just works. Mark all the signature locations? Multi-user? Chained dependencies? Recording and redownloading later? SSO Audit / identification Salesforce integration? Contract generation? Orange site minimizing huge successful company because they care about one feature seems super on brand.
- ajhurliman 5y ago
  I just went through the trouble of researching eSignature companies, and many of them have roughly similar feature sets. We ended up going with HelloSign because their API is a lot more robust. I wouldn't agree that DocuSign's continued success is because of the maturity of the product.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  In terms of features, all the things you listed aren’t technically very impressive. While I recognize their value, a potential competitor could replicate them within a reasonable timeframe. What they couldn’t replicate is the brand name.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    Lots of technically quite simple things are enough work that people will happily pay a company you do it. Did nobody here learn from the famous Dropbox comment?
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      This is a different point. We’re already talking about a company trying to build the same feature set, not an individual doing it themselves using existing technology.
    - snowwrestler 5y ago

harha 5y ago

Because slow governments didn’t manage to set an open standard for what they require so that every little court can verify if the verification approach is valid, so once again there’s a need to trust a brand name, rather than having fair competition.

AmericanChopper 5y ago
Source authentication is basically an unsolved problem. There are some cryptographic approaches to doing it, but they all basically boil down to moving trust around between different parties. The problem certainly isn’t a lack of government set open standards. The problem described above also doesn’t exist. A signature isn’t a necessary element of a contract, and even in situations where a signature is statutorily required for a certain type of contract, an e-signature is legally recognised (in all US states at least) without specifying that particular service providers or methodologies have to be used.

whirlwin 5y ago

Maybe the wrapping is glorified. But the contents of the document is the most important IMHO

humanistbot 5y ago
I assume you're not a lawyer.
Nextgrid 5y ago
The value DocuSign offers isn’t the display of the original document. It’s the claim that someone “signed” it (by ticking a checkbox) and that somehow this is being accepted by the courts.
- whirlwin 5y ago
  From experience, the legitimacy or authority of the signer has never been of question in cases brought to court. Maybe it's more relevant in the US, but in 99% of the cases I followed through has been around the interpretation of the actual terms.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Why would they be the only one ‘accepted’ in courts? For instance, when you buy a house you often have to use an escrow service to hold the down payment while the exchange of ownership takes place. Often, these escrow companies are just small local outfits. They are nevertheless trusted with a certain degree of authority and accepted as a neutral facilitator of these transactions by our legal system. In the US many (all?) states license escrow agents to make this work. There should be a similar system for licensing electronic signatures either at the state or federal level. Otherwise the acceptance of one private party over the other amounts to a government-granted monopoly, which goes against how a free society should work.

IanCal 5y ago
> Why would they be the only one ‘accepted’ in courts? That's not what they said though, and while this sounds nitpicky it's vital to the point. You can choose between a well known accepted option or something else to save a few bucks. The cost of docusign is, as far as I can tell, low enough that even considering the question for long would easily cost more.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
I'm not claiming they're the only one accepted. But if you say DocuSign, the judge will already be familiar with it. If you say anything else, they might not. And this is not just about one jurisdiction, but also other ones, where e-signature laws may be different.

cowpig 5y ago

What moat? Does Docusign have some special legal status that I'm not aware of?

867-5309 5y ago
the moat at the bottom of Monopoly Hill filled with the tears of those who were beaten to it
- cowpig 5y ago
  I don't understand what you mean by that. I run a business and I use HelloSign for document signing and it seems like an effectively identical service. I don't see why some other service can't come along and undercut Docusign

TruthWillHurt 5y ago

That's not true. A court will accept emails and documents attached to them. scanned, name typed, or signed with ms-paint - all valid.

rvnx 5y ago
I had the case where one person was signing PDF using the annotate / drawing feature. Didn't work in court, the court claimed the contract was invalid (it was the situation of a founder of a company that was raising on a convertible debt).
- staticassertion 5y ago
  That sounds totally absurd. Unless the stipulation was instead for a wet ink signature I just don't see how this could be the case. You can enter into a contract with even less than a signature (ie: just by accepting payment you can inadvertently end up in a contract), so the idea that a signature wouldn't work except in very specific cases seems pretty weird to me. I've had very few wet-ink, notarized signatures required of me. Some documents are weird though ie: a picture won't be accepted, but a scan will be, etc. God it's all so fucking stupid.
- late2part 5y ago
  Can you share the Pacer link?
bdowling 5y ago
This is basically correct. A court will generally accept a writing into evidence as long as it is relevant and authenticated by a witness or certification.

kingcharles 5y ago

All the court filings I've ever made electronically I've used the (stupidest fucking) system, which is called Conformed Signatures. You basically just type your name and put "s/" in front of it. That's supposed to tell the court you've got an original signed in pen and ink stashed in a drawer somewhere, but the reality is that no lawyer I know of actually has such a thing. https://www.cogencyglobal.com/blog/getting-document-signatures-right-its-not-as-easy-as-you-think https://www.cogencyglobal.com/blog/getting-document-signatur... I've never actually seen a proper esignature in a court document. Most court record systems are so outdated that it's honestly an enormous win if they allow you to view, upload or download documents over the web at all.

mistrial9 5y ago
which country / legal system are you describing ? Among nations worldwide, there is a massive disparity in IT and in execution of legal agreements at all, for that matter, I would guess...
- justusthane 5y ago
  U.S., according to the page the commenter linked.

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...

djbusby 5y ago

HelloSign gives three free docs per month and also works in court.

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