New DocuSign-Zoom integration lets you sign docs in a Zoom meeting

Anyone who had to get documents signed early in the pandemic knows how harrowing and dangerous the situation was. Nobody wanted to meet face-to-face, but we still had to conduct business.

Today, in an effort to simplify online document signing, Zoom and DocuSign announced a new integration that lets you review and sign a document right within a Zoom meeting, greatly simplifying the legal requirements and eliminating the need to get in a car and go to an office.

“DocuSign eSignature for Zoom enables organizations to reimagine agreement processes with virtual, face-to-face signing experiences that accelerate time to agreement – while building trust and loyalty,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the new feature.

Jerome Levadoux, SVP, head of eSignature Products at DocuSign, says that the pandemic provided a perfect use case for remote document signing. “The past few years have highlighted the need for agility and better productivity tools to meet the evolving needs of customers,” he said. That means providing tools to get the job done in one tool online without opening Zoom for the meeting and DocuSign to sign the contracts. With everything in the same application, you get a workflow that’s much more like what you would get in person.

Chances are in most situations, the person signing has had a chance to review the document and the meeting is simply to display and sign the documents. The way it works is you add DocuSign from the Zoom marketplace. This adds DocuSign to the Zoom interface. You start a meeting, click the DocuSign button to start the workflow and select the documents to be signed.

You then pass control to the first signer, complete any final discussions and have the first person sign. If there are multiple signers you would pass control to the next person to sign. After the meeting all attendees will receive a PDF of the signed contract, sent to the emails associated with the Zoom invite.

If notarization is required, the notary can view the person’s identification as part of the process and sign the documents when it is their turn. Thirty-four states now allow online notarization.

Throughout the pandemic, we have seen Zoom become a central piece in businesses operating online. We have also seen other SaaS tools allow us to continue doing business, even when we couldn’t be together. Even as we return to the office, business can continue to be conducted this way without having to travel to meet face-to-face, saving not only time, but the environmental impact of multiple parties coming to a central location.

DocuSign acquires Liveoak Technologies for $38M for online notarization

Even in the best of times, finding a notary can be a challenge. In the middle of a pandemic, it’s even more difficult. DocuSign announced it has acquired Liveoak Technologies today for approximately. $38 million, giving the company an online notarization option.

At the same time, DocuSign announced a new product called DocuSign Notary, which should ease the notary requirement by allowing it to happen online along with the eSignature. As we get deeper into the pandemic, companies like DocuSign that allow transactions to happen completely digitally are in more demand than ever. This new product will be available for early access later in the summer.

The deal made sense given that the two companies had a partnership already. Liveoak brings together live video, collaboration tooling and identity verification that enables parties to get notarized approval as though you were sitting at the desk in front of the notary.

Typically, you might get a document that requires your signature. Without electronic signature, you would need to print it, sign the document, scan it and return it. If it requires a notary, you would need to sign it in the notary’s presence, which requires an in-person visit. All of this can be streamlined with an online workflow, which DocuSign is providing with this acquisition.

It’s like the perfect pandemic acquisition, making a manual process digital and saving people from having to make face-to-face transactions at a time when it can be dangerous.

Liveoak Technologies was founded in 2014 and is part of the Austin, Texas startup scene. The company raised just under $28 million during its life as a private company. The firm most recently raised $8 million at a post-money valuation of $30.4 million, according to Pitchbook data. Given the amount that DocuSign paid for the firm, it appears to have gotten a bargain.

This acquisition is part of a growing pandemic acquisition trend of sorts where larger public enterprise companies are plucking early stage startups, in some cases for relatively bargain prices. This includes Apple buying Fleetsmith and ServiceNow acquiring Sweagle last month.

Dropbox snares HelloSign for $230M, gets workflow and eSignature

Dropbox announced today that it has purchased HelloSign, a company that provides lightweight document workflow and eSignature services. The company paid a hefty $230 million for the privilege.

Dropbox’s SVP of engineering, Quentin Clark, sees this as more than simply bolting on electronic signature functionality to the Dropbox solution. For him, the workflow capabilities that HelloSign added in 2017 were really key to the purchase.

“What is unique about HelloSign is that the investment they’ve made in APIs and the workflow products is really so aligned with our long term direction,” Clark told TechCrunch. “It’s not just a thing to do one more activity with Dropbox, it’s really going to help us pursue that broader vision,” he added. That vision involves extending the storage capabilities that is as the core of the Dropbox solution

This can also been seen in the context of the Extension capability that Dropbox added last year. HelloSign was actually one of the companies involved at launch. While Clark says the company will continue to encourage companies to extend the Dropbox solution, today’s acquisition gives it a capability of its own that doesn’t require a partnership and already is connected to Dropbox via Extensions.

Fast integration

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder and principal analyst at Deep Analysis, who has been following this market for many years, says the fact it’s an Extensions partners should allow much faster integration than would happen normally in an acquisition like this. “Simple document processes that relate to small and medium business are still largely manual. The fact that HelloSign has solutions for things like real estate, insurance and customer/employee on boarding, plus the existing extension to Dropbox, means it can be leveraged quickly for revenue growth by Dropbox, Pelz-Sharp explained.

He added that the size of the deal shows that there is high demand for these kinds capabilities. “It is a very high multiple, but in such a fast growth area not an unreasonable one to demand for a startup showing such growth potential. The price suggests that there were almost certainly other highly motivated bidders for the deal,” he said.

HelloSign CEO Joseph Walla says being part of Dropbox gives HelloSign access to resources of a much larger public company, which should allow it to reach a broader market than it could on its own. “We share a design philosophy based on building the best experience for end-users, fueling our efficient business models and sales strategies. Together with Dropbox, we can bring more seamless document workflows to even more customers and dramatically accelerate our impact,”  Walla said in a blog post announcing the deal.

HelloSign remains standalone

Whitney Bouck, COO at HelloSign, who previous held stints at Box and EMC Documentum, said the company will remain an independent entity. That means it will continue to operate with its current management structure as part of the Dropbox family. In fact, Clark indicated that all of the HelloSign employees will be offered employment at Dropbox as part of the deal.

“We’re going to remain effectively a standalone business within the Dropbox family, so that we can continue to focus on developing the great products that we have and delivering value. So the good news is that our customers won’t really experience any massive change. They just get more opportunity,” Bouck said.

Alan Lepofsky, an analyst at Constellation Research who specializes in enterprise workflow, sees HelloSign giving Dropbox an enterprise-class workflow tool, but adds that the addition of Bouck and her background in enterprise content management is also a key factor for Dropbox in this deal. “While this is not an aquihire, DropBox does end up with Whitney Bouck, a proven leader in expanding offerings into enterprise scale accounts. I believe she could have a large impact in Dropbox’s battle with her former employer Box,” Lepofsky told TechCrunch.

Clark said that it was too soon to say exactly how it will bundle and incorporate HelloSign functionality beyond the Extensions. But he expects that the company will find a way to integrate the two products where it make sense, even while HelloSign operates as a separate company with its own customers.

When you consider that HelloSign, a Bay area startup that launched in 2011, raised just $16 million, it appears to be an impressive return for investors and a solid exit for the company. 

The deal is expected to close in Q1 and is, per usual, dependent on regulatory approval.