DocuSign has unveiled a new investment arm dedicated to investing in and partnering with companies involved in all stages of the agreement process.
DocuSign Ventures will be investing in entrepreneurs and startups that are “changing the future of how we all will agree.”
The fund is DocuSign’s way of attempting to stay close to the startups disrupting the agreement process. It says the technologies it is interested in include agreement process automation and workflows; AI and smart contract technology; identity verification and management; digital payment platforms; legal and compliance automation technologies; and vertical solutions in areas such as mortgage and lending.
DocuSign already has investments in BlackBoiler, DataGrail, Pactum, and Snapdocs, and a recent investment in The LegalTech Fund, an early-stage investment fund focused on startups that are disrupting the legal space.
The San Francisco-headquartered company has also made investments in, and subsequently acquired, Seal Software and Clause. These relationships have led to enhancements to the DocuSign Agreement Cloud platform.
“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.”