Thursday, July 19, 2012

Tired of paper and pen?


Who is not tired of having to sign a document on paper and then send a copy by fax or scanner? Or even worse, have to travel for a signture: last month, I had to sign a notarised document for a family matter and the only way to make this happen was to travel to Paris and show up at the notary's office to sign one single document. Very expensive signature both in terms of time and travel costs....Isn't this crazy XXIst century?

Hopefully, this will be over soon as Docusign expands its network of 20m users, who have already signed more than 150m documents in 188 countries. Venture is all about investing in disrupting technology and Docusign is disrupting a very basic process: signing a document. It sounds very simple but the complexity is to make this service as easy and simple as is a signature on paper, while being able to manage the flow of the document and provide the required security to make signatures reliables.

This technology is impacting nearly all the areas of a company: from human resouces employment contracts and onboarding documents, to procurement, sales, legal and finance. Signatures are everywhere and with a digitized workflow, documents can travel across department, subsidiaries and countries within seconds, shortening the execution cycles from days to minutes. In addition, the rise of tablets and mobile devices will accelerate the growth by making the signature process ubiquitous.

Facebook is your social network, LinkedIn your professional network and Docusign will be your identity network.

As several sites announced last week, Docusign raised a large $50m round to fuel its growth, in particular in Europe and Accel participated alongside Kleiner Perkins and existing investors. I look forward to work with Keith Krach, Mike Dinsdale, Tom Gonser and the rest of the Docusign team on this great adventure!

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