In 2014 we identified Docusign as the Category King of e-Signature.
Docusign grew exponentially during COVID. Their market cap hit almost $60 billion in late 2021, a 10X increase since their market debut in April 2018.
But like all great categories, the final stage of the category lifecycle sees slowing growth and ultimately decline.
So what do you do when growth is slowing?
You re-scope the problem and expand your solution.
Ambitious and exceptionally difficult under the bright lights of public markets and investors, requiring precision, an awesome executive team and courage.
Last week Docusign did just that.
According to IDC:
"All in all, we were impressed with Docusign's announcements. While it was something the company was obligated to do, it appears to be doing it well. If Docusign Momentum attendees are an indication, Docusign has hit a home run, as there was significant applause and cheering. Of course, the ultimate proof will be in execution.”
Their annual Momentum 24 conference was the perfect place to do their lightning strike. Thousands of customer, prospects, investors and analysts in the audience.
Allan Thygesen, Robert Chatwani, Dmitri Krakovsky, Tanya Faddoul and other leaders talked about a problem that has been sitting in plain sight, which nobody thought could be solved.
The problem was critical agreement data trapped in dumb flat files.
Not just any data - but the terms of agreement between two organizations or people. The basis of payment, transfer of intellectual property, or a physical asset like a home.
Perhaps the most important data in our lives… Trapped in dumb flat files.
They also did their homework. They quantified the consequences of this agreement trap. Deloitte did the research and estimated the cost to be $2 Trillion per year.
To be clear - that is 10% of the GDP of the United States of America!
Like the great companies who consciously move into a second act (think iTunes at Apple, AWS at Amazon or Creative Cloud at Adobe) Docusign announced a new set of solutions to solve this problem.
Docusign IAM.
The blueprint they published for the Intelligent Agreement Management category sets the bar for everyone else.
Sounds easy right?
It wasn’t.
Moving from eSignature to Intelligent Agreement Management was an impossible journey. Change Management was the foundation for the transformation and category design the method.
We are proud to say that we worked with the Docusign team throughout this journey. And we are equally as proud of Allan and Robert for committing to it.
Perhaps most of all, we are proud of the hundreds of Docusign staff members who committed to transforming from a comfortable and cozy existing category into a new and uncharted one.
Congratulations.
Now lets get back to work… Strike 2 is just around the corner…
Al Ramadan
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