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

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

#151

Post by [deleted] »

Teever wrote: post #140
judge2020 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ori…

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.

[deleted]

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

#152

Post by smsm42 »

elil17 wrote: post #41

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 ageeement…

TBH Docusign also has more polished UI - like allowing to specify where to sign and knowing that all places necessary were signed, etc. - and keeping track of documents I've signed has value even for me as a user. So it's nice when a company gives the signing party a more polished solution. But yeah, I've signed many documents by just typing into PDF too. For something like lease, it's completely fine.

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

#153

Post by grosswait »

crummy wrote: post #37
dsizzle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Print to tiff file then back to pdf. Boom. Looks like a scan.

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

#154

Post by vkou »

sushsjsuauahab wrote: post #144
Teever wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

The government already has that control for one of the most important bits of 'truth', its called a land registry.

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

#155

Post by wallacoloo »

xiphias2 wrote: post #119
adventured wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tec…

Coinbase is overvalued because people don’t understand the difference between Coinbase (which has enourmous fees for guaranteeing a price for selling/buying cryptocurrencies) and Coinbase Pro (which is a market maker with lots of competitors, where you can just create a market order and you will execute the trade with a much more competitive margin). As competitors copy the ease of use (like Strike with a 0 profit on…

AFAIK Coinbase Pro isn’t a market maker, it’s a marketplace. a market maker would be someone who offers to buy/sell some asset for a specific price. for example when i use Coinbase Pro to place an offer to buy 1 Bitcoin for $55000, i’m acting as a market maker.

all the same, i agree with you: it’s already cheaper to use Coinbase Pro as an on-ramp to obtain USDC and then trade the USDC on a decentralized exchange that charges 1/5th the fees as Coinbase Pro. that wasn’t the case 2 years ago, and i don’t see any compelling reason to believe that Coinbase the company won’t continue to lose its mote, over the long term, in an industry which is fundamentally about decentralization.

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

#156

Post by wintermutestwin »

antjanus wrote: post #59
codingdave wrote: post #10

> 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 acceptanc…

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 c…

>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.

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

#157

Post by justusthane »

mistrial9 wrote: post #105
kingcharles wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-d…

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...

U.S., according to the page the commenter linked.

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

#158

Post by rmbyrro »

Teever wrote: post #146
sushsjsuauahab wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Would you advocate for the privatization of the entire justice system?

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.

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

#159

Post by wallacoloo »

rubyfan wrote: post #117
rightisleft wrote: post #25

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…

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 t…

> 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.

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

#160

Post by lootsauce »

smcl wrote: post #81
ChrisClark wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He thinks Tesla is a complete scam for one thing... Probably not a good idea to spend time on any of his comments.

Hm ok, well while I don't think Tesla can really be called a scam I definitely think it's overvalued

Enron was not a scam until it was.
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