DocuSign launches new VC arm

DocuSign, an electronic agreement signing company, has launched a new venture capital arm. DocuSign Ventures will focus on early-stage agreement process companies.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—October 14, 2021— DocuSign (NASDAQ: DOCU), the world’s leading way to electronically sign and manage contracts, today introduced DocuSign Ventures, a new initiative dedicated to nurturing the growing ecosystem of entrepreneurs and startups that are changing the future of how we all will agree.

DocuSign Ventures focuses on co-investing in and partnering with companies raising early stage funding to innovate around the agreement process. It is also another demonstration of DocuSign’s commitment to customer success. By staying close to and working with the startups innovating at the edge, DocuSign can help its customers identify and integrate new solutions. This includes technologies that facilitate pre-agreement work and negotiation, in addition to the logistics and workflows that may result after an agreement is signed.

DocuSign Ventures is interested in a diverse range of innovative technologies being used to transform how agreements are created, executed, and managed including:

Agreement process automation and workflows
AI and smart contract technology
Identity verification and management
Digital payment platforms
Legal and compliance automation technologies
Vertical solutions in areas such as mortgage and lending

With over a billion users globally, DocuSign brings a unique dedicated focus and expertise in and around everything agreements. This gives portfolio companies access to DocuSign’s deep knowledge of the space, as well as the opportunity to develop closer partnerships with the DocuSign Agreement Cloud platform and work with DocuSign’s broader ecosystem of more than one million customers, developers and partners.

DocuSign Ventures reinforces the company’s existing strategic investments and partnership efforts across the startup ecosystem, which include investments in BlackBoiler, DataGrail, Pactum, and Snapdocs, and a recent investment in The LegalTech Fund, an early stage fund focused on backing companies that are transforming the world of law. In addition, DocuSign Ventures made investments in and subsequently acquired Seal Software and Clause. These relationships have led to enhancements to the DocuSign Agreement Cloud platform including AI-powered contract analytics and smart agreement capabilities.

“Agreements are fundamental to everything, traversing how we conduct business and defining the important life commitments we make and depend upon. Despite their essential nature, the agreement process today is still largely manual, static and rooted in paper,” said Eric Darwin, Head of Corporate Development at DocuSign. “More and more businesses are recognizing the power and urgency of digitizing their agreement processes in order to meet the new ‘anywhere expectations’ of their customers, partners, and employees. DocuSign Ventures is excited to partner with the disruptors who are propelling smarter, simpler and frankly better ways of executing and fulfilling agreements.”

Learn more about DocuSign Ventures here.

About DocuSign
DocuSign helps organizations connect and automate how they prepare, sign, act on, and manage agreements. As part of the DocuSign Agreement Cloud, DocuSign offers eSignature, the world’s #1 way to sign electronically on practically any device, from almost anywhere, at any time. Today, over a million customers and more than a billion users in over 180 countries use the DocuSign Agreement Cloud to accelerate the process of doing business and to simplify people’s lives. For more information, visit www.docusign.com.