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Dropbox buys HelloSign (YC W11) for $230M

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Re: Dropbox buys HelloSign (YC W11) for $230M

#71

Post by Consultant32452 »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #51

As someone who has never worked in an enterprise SaaS will never fully understand the hype or secret sauce around building and selling eSignature software.

My small business accountant worked this way. You can upload docs to their portal and e-sign the required contract or pay extra to have a face to face where you hand it all off and sign in person.

You have no idea what kind of computer or technical expertise is on the other end of situations like this. The value add by e-signature SaaS providers is minimizing the amount of time the accountant employees have to deal with helping people sign docs.

Re: Dropbox buys HelloSign (YC W11) for $230M

#74

Post by seem_2211 »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #51

As someone who has never worked in an enterprise SaaS will never fully understand the hype or secret sauce around building and selling eSignature software.

There are a few big benefits to eSignature software

• Your contracts are all in one place • It's easy to make new ones / send them out • You can see if the other person has opened it etc. • It's easier for them to sign

As an individual it's hard to see the benefit of a lot of this software in your own life, just like it's hard to see the benefit of a lot of corporate IT tools to manage two computers at home. But if you have 100 contracts as a company (which is not very many), having an centralised storage function, an easy way to create new ones (say for bringing on a new customer or employee), and analytics that mean you're not asking "what happened to the ACME contract last week."

A lot of enterprise SaaS tools make it easy to organize things that are simple at a small scale, but become very difficult when you increase things by 10-1000x.

Re: Dropbox buys HelloSign (YC W11) for $230M

#76

Post by g45y45 »

dymk wrote: post #70
hashkb wrote: post #11

Finally DropBox will offer a useful product.

You think their core offering isn't useful?

How many companies are either Office 365 or GSuite? You get document storage and syncing as standard these days. You need a compelling reason to use Dropbox over GDrive/OneDrive.

Re: Dropbox buys HelloSign (YC W11) for $230M

#77

Post by okmokmz »

bogomipz wrote: post #69
briandear wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but snare can be used in this context. I highly suggest consulting a dictionary if you are unsure about the definition of a word. Just because the word used is not definition 1, doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. Snare is absolutely acceptable in this context.

I am perfectly sure of the definition of that word. I worked as a copy editor in a past life. I would suggest maybe you consult the Oxford or Merriam-Webster dictionary: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/snare https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snare The verb form of the word snare is neither applicable or correct to describe a non-hostile business deal, even colloquially. Hellosign wasn't "trapped…

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snare

transitive verb

1b : to win or attain by artful or skillful maneuvers

Re: Dropbox buys HelloSign (YC W11) for $230M

#78

Post by nothrows »

Got this email from them a couple days ago:

We’ve noticed you haven’t used your XXX@XXX.com Dropbox account in over one year and have closed your account for you. Devices connected to this account have now stopped syncing. Any remaining files in your account will be subject to deletion.

Sincerely, - The Dropbox Team

There goes my files. Fuck dropbox. Stick to google drive.

Re: Dropbox buys HelloSign (YC W11) for $230M

#79

Post by danielrhodes »

chrisseaton wrote: post #16
gruez wrote: post #8

There's something I never understood about e-signature services: how are they legally binding? Why do we need them at all? The end users don't have control over any of the keys, so it all hinges on the e-signature service telling the truth. It's significantly less secure than say, S/MIME with a proper CA-signed certificate. Is the bar for legal "signatures" really that low?

The law isn’t like programming. The reason you sign something is to show clear intent that you intended to agree to something. Nobody’s under the impression a paper signature cannot be forged either. It’s no different. It’s social not mathematical.

This 1000% percent.

The way the law looks at signatures is about the signaling of intent. The way engineers/tech look at signatures is more about trust and identity. There is some overlap of course, but if the agreement to be signed is of any real importance, nobody is going to take the chance that the identity is false or that there were no witnesses or a mis-understanding of what is in the agreement, so signing is done with wet ink.

Re: Dropbox buys HelloSign (YC W11) for $230M

#80

Post by laurihy »

twunde wrote: post #52
gruez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because the ceremony of a signature Come to think of it, I remember "signing" pdfs in adobe reader by clicking a form field that produced a signature similar to[1]: John Smith Digitally signed by CN=John Smith [...] This would satisfy the "ceremony" requirement. According to adobe[2] it looks like you can do this with self signed certificates, so it's completely free as well. But this option is significantly less po…

The main benefit is around workflows. First and foremost, if you are in a position where you need external people to sign documents (say you're a photographer and need signed releases), it's a lot easier to send someone a link to the standard document and get them to sign a release then to email them and then call the person and walk them through digitally signing a document. Especially if you're doing this 50+ times…

It's also a huge win if you need multiple people to sign a document.

Without a tool like HelloSign you need to email the document to each person one by one to get everyone to sign on the same "paper". It's a mess and takes up a lot of time and coordination.

With HelloSign (and other similar tools), you can just send out an email with a link to everyone at once. They can sign the document asynchronously in whichever order they want, and when everyone has done that, you get a notification.

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