Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

191–200 of 348 posts

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

#191
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.

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

#192
post #187
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Would you advocate for the privatization of the entire justice system? What if that meant that people could fire their police department and replace it with a different one if they didn't like the way it operated?

IS that in any way feasible or realistic? I don't ever see this even being possible considering the police department is not only going to have more resources, it is in their vested interest to stay in power and are only going to be more aggressive. This seems like a terrible idea

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

#193
post #5

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/

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/szimek/signature_pad

IANAL, but the value of a service like DocuSign is being a third-party whose records the counterparties cannot manipulate.

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

#194

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 D…

[deleted]

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

I have only seen it happen when it turns out the vendor is shadow owned by a senior executive. Usually ends bad for the executive

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

#196
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you advocate for the privatization of the entire justice system? What if that meant that people could fire their police department and replace it with a different one if they didn't like the way it operated?

IS that in any way feasible or realistic? I don't ever see this even being possible considering the police department is not only going to have more resources, it is in their vested interest to stay in power and are only going to be more aggressive. This seems like a terrible idea

> IS that in any way feasible or realistic?

That would depend on exactly how things were set up, but we do it with politicians who have all the same bad incentives to keep power.

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/szimek/signature_pad

IANAL, but the value of a service like DocuSign is being a third-party whose records the counterparties cannot manipulate.

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.

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

#198
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.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-f...

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.

The fact that you can't do that with the public courts but you can with private arbitration makes it an issue with private arbitration.

Parties with fewer resources are at a huge disadvantage in either system, but there are degrees of disadvantage. It is misleading to examine the outcome of arbitration once the rules are "agreed" to without taking into account that the process of setting the rules strongly influences said outcome.

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

#200
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.

Post reply on HN