[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why is Docusign a $50B company?
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Ask HN: Why is Docusign a $50B company?
I have been searching for a solution to e-sign some lease
agreements. It is something that I need to do maybe once a year and
the only thing I need is a legally binding way to put signatures
and timestamps on a PDF. I do not need any fancy features. I was
doing research, and it seems like most document signature companies
all charge monthly subscription fees! This does not work for me as
I am not using the platform on a monthly basis. Are there free,
open source alternatives to Docusign? If so, why do more companies
not use them?
Author : akouri
Score : 32 points
Date : 2021-11-27 21:47 UTC (1 hours ago)
| codingdave wrote:
| > 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 acceptance, legally speaking.
|
| DocuSign's use case is not the signing, but the management of
| those documents and signatures - tracking which documents are
| sent, which have been read (yes, the doc owner can get notified
| when you even look at a Docusign document), which have been
| signed, and being able to store copies of signed docs. It is
| mostly for the companies sending you contracts, not for you as
| the signer.
| dsizzle wrote:
| I've signed PDFs digitally overlaying a digital version in
| Preview on a Mac, which is free -- for all parties. I'm not
| sure if there's more legal wiggle room for that version vs
| Docusign or not.
|
| But yes, as noted, DocuSign has other features.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| id also bet their backend does all kind of fingerprinting of
| who/what signs a document to ensure they can make the
| electronic signature defensible.
| arrakis2021 wrote:
| Enterprises generally don't want or care about open source
| software.
| Seanambers wrote:
| I just use the PDF sign feature which basically adds a picture of
| my signature to the document.
|
| No one has noticed so far :=)
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Because the market is batshit insane right now. Been investing
| for 30 years (started right after the Savings and Loan Scandal
| bust in the late 80's), and the insanity dwarfs the Dot Com
| bubble. People who don't understand the basics of investing
| always joke about how it is a casino, and that was always a
| little true, but now it is massively true.
| roeschger wrote:
| First a disclaimer: I am no lawyer, but I am one of the co-
| founders of Skribble[0], an e-signature provider from
| Switzerland.
|
| I don't want to go into details but depending on which country
| you need your signatures to be legally binding and the type of
| contract you are signing, you might need a higher signature
| standard than the one you get from DocuSign.
|
| At Skribble we offer all 3 signature standards defined by the
| European law. The lowest standard is very similar to what you get
| from DocuSign.
|
| Also, at Skribble you get 2 signatures per month for free and a
| pay-as-you-go model for individuals.
|
| I'd be happy if you give it a try at [1].
|
| [0] https://www.skribble.com/en-eu/ [1]
| https://my.skribble.com/signup/
| revorad wrote:
| I use https://www.signwell.com. It works really well and the free
| tier is enough for infrequent use.
| tylermenezes wrote:
| Most of the documents people e-sign are related to business deals
| (contracts, NDAs, etc) or HR (offer letters) which are such high
| dollar value transactions that the cost of e-signing is
| negligible.
|
| Your use case unfortunately is just not worth it to them in
| comparison.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Sign a piece of paper and scan it. No cost.
| ipince wrote:
| Who has scanners (and printers) these days? And going to Fedex
| to print/scan is a cost too.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| take a picture of it
| nwatson wrote:
| Docusign and other services like it do more than send out forms
| to collect signatures. There often are other fields / data
| collected, alternative forms of documents presented depending
| on target party's profile, etc. If you take the sign/scan/send
| form, the receiving company still needs to do all the work to
| put that form in the right place and perhaps extract further
| data for further steps in some data pipeline. Docusign et al
| will presumably integrate straight into your document flow,
| much simpler in the long run with fewer people.
|
| Just to put one alternative company into the fray, there's
| Docsmore (https://client.docsmore.com/features.html), a local
| startup (North Carolina) that offers document management /
| signing / document flow as a service. I'd imagine it would be
| hard to go up against a giant like Docusign unless there are
| compelling additional features.
|
| The Docsmore founders seem to have more recently used the
| service as a jumping-off point for a separate insurance claims-
| processing automation company, Benekiva
| (https://www.benekiva.com/) (Iowa/North Carolina). That seems
| even more lucrative than straightforward document signing/data-
| collection.
|
| EDIT: I have no relation to the company, I've met some of the
| founders before
| vsenko wrote:
| Now really sure that it'll help you, but in Kazakhstan digital
| signatures can be legally significant (have equal significance as
| hand-written signatures) in case if several requirements are met.
|
| One of the requirements is that certificate has to be issued by
| accredited CA. And there is one such CA - National CA
| (https://pki.gov.kz/), it issues such certificates for free.
|
| Also there is a service that allows anyone to sign any file using
| a certificate issued by National CA - https://sigex.kz, thus
| making it legally significant. It's free for use (except for
| heavy RPS enterprise users and the ones, how need support).
|
| So in Kazakhstan you can do e-docs signed by e-signs totally for
| free.
|
| P.S.: Pardon, but the links are in Russian.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| The KZ government PKI has had quite the history:
|
| - Kazakhstan man-in-the-middle attack
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_man-in-the-middle_a...
|
| - "Certificate cannot be trusted" warning in Kazakhstan
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/certificate-cannot-be-t...
|
| - Kazakhstan Attempts to MITM Its Citizens
| https://www.f5.com/labs/articles/threat-intelligence/kazakhs...
| tibbetts wrote:
| Because there is a natural monopoly in being a trusted provider
| of legal transaction services. Both for integrations and for the
| fact that no one wants to risk their job saving a few dollars on
| digital signatures. And no one wants to explain to a future
| acquirer / legal inquiry / judge / whatever that they are using
| some weird alternative. "We process the contracts with Docusign"
| is a safe thing to say. If that wasn't good enough, a whole lot
| of other people would also be in trouble, so the collective
| hallucination that is our legal system will support it.
| runnr_az wrote:
| 100% agree. We looked at sourcing different providers for a
| project, but for things involving trust, the known brand is an
| easy choice.
| programmarchy wrote:
| esignatures.io could be a nice solution. I've used them for
| client projects and they have a simple API, too. They have a
| $0.49 per contract pricing model.
| funstuff007 wrote:
| A Docusign hack would be downright amazing. Among other things,
| you'd probably get to see how much big oil pays direct to
| dictators, or (more likely) the entities they control.
| salade_pissoir wrote:
| It seems unlikely that a big oil company would rely on Docusign
| for serious skulduggery. They'd send couriers and the like for
| that.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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 DocuSign anyways.
| rightisleft wrote:
| 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 against notarize.com
|
| Someone is going to roll a decentralized ID system on blockchain
| and tank this whole sector...
| mtlynch wrote:
| 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/
| GDC7 wrote:
| Oh it's a long story...where to begin?
|
| It all started in 2006 when the economy grew at 6.6% in Q3 and
| the Fed still claimed that not tightening was a great insurance
| policy.
|
| Fast forward:
|
| Subprime crisis
|
| Bernanke says "subprime is contained"
|
| Subprime was not contained
|
| Wheels come off in 2008
|
| Everybody runs away like chicken with their heads cut off
|
| Everybody goes back to Bernanke asking for solutions
|
| Bernanke proposes QE, something that he claims "works in
| practice, but not in theory"
|
| Slow recovery
|
| More panic
|
| More QE
|
| Temper Tantrum
|
| More QE
|
| 13 years of regular QE
|
| 2 years of QE on steroids due to COVID
|
| Asset prices only go up
|
| Everything bubble
|
| And here we get to the current scenario where scam companies are
| worth trillions and Docusign is worth 50B
| smcl wrote:
| What scam companies are worth trillions?
| teeray wrote:
| A zoom recording with a witness involved maybe?
| xn wrote:
| I don't know what's legally binding in your jurisdiction, but in
| the US, scribbling on a PDF will suffice for most purposes.
| xournal++ is a free tool that will support this.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I paid for DocuSign's annual fee the year I bought my house
| because it was just that much easier to sign everything
| electronically. The only documents I signed in person were at the
| closing. Everything else was done electronically, which was
| beautiful.
|
| I have to admit, over the past two years I've run into two pieces
| of professional software that made me think, dang, this thing
| actually works and is a material improvement on the old state of
| affairs. One was Fusion 360 and one was DocuSign. (I say this as
| a casual user of both relevant categories of software.)
| 960design wrote:
| The US has had an Electronic Signature law since 2000:
| https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-106publ229/pdf/PLAW...
|
| tl dr; Typed signatures are legal in a digital form if the form
| states this is a signature block. There is no need for a third
| party such as docusign.
|
| Further verification standards have been adopted, but not
| required, to identify typed signatures. The most common is the
| leading "//". So my legal signature would look like this:
|
| //William Hagan
| potatolicious wrote:
| As with many situations with enterprise software vs. roll-your-
| own solutions (FOSS or otherwise): reliability, responsibility,
| and liability are the reasons.
|
| Most enterprise software is purchased to do something the company
| requires, but is not within the company's actual line of
| business. Payroll, tax calculations, identity verification, etc.
|
| In these cases "cheap" is not very important so long as the
| solutions are cheap _enough_ relative to the value of what the
| company 's business. This is also why companies routinely
| contract out vast amounts of work to highly-paid lawyers - paying
| someone six figures to do work on a deal that's worth 9 figures
| is a rounding error, and is not a cost worth optimizing.
|
| More importantly, the third party provides two important pieces:
| responsibility and liability. Docusign is on the hook if they
| fail to validate the signers' identity, and if anything goes awry
| Docusign is on the hook for fixing it. These are features, not
| bugs, to enterprises who need a function performed but really do
| not want the liability or responsibility around it.
|
| This is similar to why tech companies outsource to cloud services
| rather than run on their own metal.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _> and is not a cost worth optimizing._
|
| Well, it's kind of like plumbing. Once established, you don't
| think about it much until something goes wrong. Maybe someone
| notices, "Hey, our annual maintenance is $x, but I think the
| normal rate is only $x-y."
|
| But unless it's time for a lot of belt tightening, making that
| change is pure risk if the system mostly works, problems are
| fixed quickly, etc. Because maybe you change plumbers, and
| there's a catastrophic failure _that would have happened
| anyway_ , but now via the magic of post-hoc fallacies it looks
| like the change is what caused the problem. (And maybe it did!
| who knows?)
|
| So there are many things in any organization that only get
| optimized/updated (or even just simple maintenance) when they
| become a noticeable problem. The old adage about not fixing
| what isn't broken-- you need to really be able to show a likely
| failure in order to make a preemptive change.
| ineedasername wrote:
| As a side note, this can be a good thing. When a certain
| amount of change aversion isn't maintained, you get change
| for change's sake. Organizationally, you get every new
| manager trying to "make their mark" on things. Individually,
| you get developers trying to add "migrated product to $X
| shiny new framework" to their resume for their next job hop
| in 2-3 years.
|
| But many/most of us have probably also worked in environments
| that were far too conservative about changes, so that may be
| the more common problem.
| kosolam wrote:
| So why is it 50b company?
| [deleted]
| niftylettuce wrote:
| Working on an open source alternative, email me at
| niftylettuce@gmail.com if you want to try the beta.
|
| We're the team behind https://forwardemail.net
|
| Everything 100% transparent, open-source, privacy-focused, with
| fair pricing
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