Reflections on Docusign’s IPO and future

When I joined Docusign in January last year, I remember being incredibly impressed by the company’s strong SaaS platform, and the team’s sense of purpose to drive customer success and make a positive impact in our communities.

Today, as I sit here at the Nasdaq stock market in New York City reflecting back on that moment, I realise how much still rings true. We care about the same things, we are doing the same things, and we are always striving to be better. Today, the main difference is we are a bigger company, we create cash instead of consuming it, and as of a few moments ago, we are now one that’s public (Nasdaq: DOCU).

Today, I am so proud of Team Docusign.  And against the backdrop of our initial public offering (which I see as the start, not the finish line), I want to talk a little about what happens next.

We live in an accelerated world, where technology is enabling business to be done faster, easier and at lower cost than ever before. To adapt to this change, many organisations have undertaken digital transformation projects. Docusign’s role in this has been to help digitise and automate the agreement process—something that has traditionally been rife with printing, faxing, scanning, emailing, mailing, couriering, and other manual activities.

It has been a unique technology challenge. In addressing this opportunity since 2003, we have built a business with more than US$500 million in revenue in FY2018 (did I mention cash-flow-positive?), over 370,000 paying customers, and hundreds of millions of users in more than 180 countries.

The reason for this growth is simple: by eliminating the paper and automating the processes, we allow our customers to measure turnaround time in minutes rather than days, reduce costs, largely eliminate errors, and enable a faster, better experience for their customers and employees. In short, we accelerate business and simplify life.

Our experience as the market leader in e-signature has also given us unique insight into the entire agreement lifecycle—what it takes to digitise, simplify and streamline everything from the preparation, through signature, to the execution and management of agreements.

We call this a “system of agreement.” Every organisation already has one—it’s just not efficient, integrated, or completely digital. And almost none are ready to handle the pressures of today’s accelerated world, let alone tomorrow’s.  So for the future, we intend to build on our e-signature foundation towards a broader goal: to help organisations modernise their systems of agreement.

You can expect to see us further accelerate how business gets done, keep simplifying life, and show millions more people why, for the most important moments in business and life, #WeDocuSign.

Here’s to the future.

-Dan.