Contract-management startup EchoSign has just closed a $6 million round of financing, led by Emergence Capital. Previously, the company had raised $2.5 million from Storm Ventures.
EchoSign is a Web-based service that lets you append digital signatures to contracts and other business documents, store them in digital form, and manage those documents without printing them out and faxing them. The service has attracted 144,000 users (the vast, vast majority are not paying). The basic service is free, but things like extra document storage, encryption, and integration with Salesforce.com require subscription upgrades that start at $12.95 a month. Paying customers (there are more than 2,000) include British Telecom (with over 2,700 sales reps using the service), GE, PayPal, Rite-Aid, Johnson & Johnson, and even bail bondsmen (you can fill out that bond application online next time your bad-seed cousin ends up in the slammer).
EchoSign is one of the top-rated applications on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. (Emergence was a venture investor in Salesforce.com as well). Bigger sales teams tend to sign up on Salesforce..com because EchoSign offers a way to track how the entire team is doing in actually closing signed deals. EchoSign also works with Zoho and is a partner on WebEx Connect (WebEx’s answer to AppExchange), which just launched in private beta this week. Competitors to EchoSign include DocuSign and Negonation.
TechCrunch first wrote about EchoSign back in January, 2006.
Props to Art & Dan at Echosign!
it’s doing well on appexchange? that means salesforce.com will just build their own version of it…look out echosign!
$6 million dollar… I duno…. What if talent programmer done it cheaper and program exactly same?
You shouldn’t ask for more.
We use EchoSign at our business and it really saves us a tremendous amount of time. I can’t believe no one thought of this before. Faster closes on sales everyday. Very cool.
This is a homerun idea. It comes down to distribution and execution.
If the company stumbles eFax (J2 Global) or Adobe will pick it up for peanuts. As a matter of fact I’m extremely surprised that Salesforce did not buy them. It’s no secret that Salesforce needs to start acquiring some companies. On the other hand they probably did attempt such a ploy, and if not, then Benioff needs to bring on some better corp dev talent.
Long over due app. Security will be an issue; no one wants sensitive pricing and deal terms on a server thats not your own. Good for basic’s like NDA’s and stuff.
I give them 4 month before the founder takes off with whatever is left of the money!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Congrats to Jason (EchoSign) and Jason (Emergence). When I first used EchoSign to sign a contract for the Office 2.0 Conference (http://www.office20con.com/) I had one of those “ah-hah” moments when I realized just how much EchoSign streamlined the contract signature process for high-volume deal-making. I think this company will continue to grow and solve this important “plumbing” problem that creates real friction in business. I only wish I had joined GRP early enough to try and co-invest.
#6
I completely disagree. Companies such as salesforce not only have sensitive company pricing and deal terms (contracts),but they also house customer lists, prospect lists, upcoming marketing campaigns, projects…..
#8
I agree. Very similar problem that eFax solved. Just look at their growth over the past four years (with a couple of stock splits)
Trouble is that EchoSign basically gives their service away, and they don’t have much in the way of big-name customers. That’s probably why they only got $6 million — half of what others such as DocuSign just picked up. Weak business model and not-ready-for-primetime infrastructure.
#10 – BT, GE, PayPal, Rite-Aid, Johnson & Johnson sound like pretty big-name customers. EchoSign is a killer service that I use frequently to speed up sales cycles and to save time spent faxing and emailing. Its an iconic app for Office 2.0. Plus with funding rounds, its quality not quantity that matters. Look at recent acquisitions for example – Mozy ($1.9 million funding acquired by EMC for $70 million) . Bigger funding doesn’t necessarily mean better. Do more with less and you will win big. EchoSign embodies that idea perfectly.
@Eric(11)-Be careful being impressed by big name companies listed as customers of ANY company. Typically the company only has a small footprint, usually in a single department somewhere in the giga customer. This footprint could provide an entry or expansion point for the company but usually it doesn’t.
Where’s all that funding going? It doesn’t seem towards the product. After 2 yeaers of using EchoSign – we’ve switched. I won’t say to which company but check out Sertifi and DocuSign – great solutions that support .html forms (instead of just fillable .pdfs) and custom signing locations throughout a document.
y
“EchoSign 4.0 Empowers Sales to Close Quicker and Easier in the Cloud”
Appreciate the above comments. Check out our very latest release of the web’s #1 electronic signature solution, a quick video at: http://vimeo.co...amp;sec=2177558