DocuSign, the world’s leading e-signature provider and contract manager, introduced DocuSign Ventures, a new investment initiative to target the growing ecosystem of entrepreneurs and startups in the legal tech sector.
DocuSign Ventures focuses on co-investing in and partnering with companies raising early stage funding to innovate around the agreement process. By staying close to and working with the startups innovating at the edge, DocuSign aims to 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
DocuSign Ventures gives portfolio companies access to DocuSign’s deep knowledge of document management, 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 legal market. 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.“
DocuSign Ventures invests in companies that are innovating in areas that directly touch or are adjacent to the agreements ecosystem. It targets early stage companies that have achieved early signs of product / market fit, typically Series A-C.
Startups and entrepreneurs can apply for a partnership with Ventures by sending a pitch deck, a recorded demo, and a brief overview of how the DocuSign Agreement Cloud ecosystem can help them achieve their goals.
