Whether you’re leasing an apartment, buying a car, or filing your taxes, you’ll need to sign an official document at some point in your life. HelloSign wants to bypass faxes and snail mail by digitalizing the process with its e-signature service and today announced funding of $16 million, led by Foundry Group and Zach Coelius, former founder and CEO of Triggit. Other existing investors that joined the round include Greylock Partners and Keith Rabois.
“There are certain laws and regulations that still deem a ‘wet’ signature on paper is required,” wrote HelloSign cofounder and CEO Joseph Walla, in an email to VentureBeat. “But these rulings were written before the advent of e-signature, and most agree that they need to change to allow for the easier, safer, and more secure e-signature options.”
The San Francisco-based startup claims to have 53,000 customers worldwide — including Lyft, Instacart, Samsung, and Time Inc. — which use HelloSign to onboard new employees, generate corporate compliance approvals, or build the service into their own applications, like Oracle.
“Unlike DocuSign, we will completely white label our platform, enabling our customers to preserve their brand and online experience for their customers,” wrote Walla. “Oracle chose HelloSign to directly embed into their cloud applications so that they could ultimately deliver e-sign capabilities under the Oracle brand. Think of us as the Twilio or Stripe of the e-signature market.”
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DocuSign is not a competitor HelloSign can simply shake off, though — the company, which is valued at $3 billion by its investors, recently hired a new CEO and is prepping for its initial public offering (IPO). Other competitors include Adobe Sign and SignNow.
HelloSign’s basic plan starts at $15 per month for end users, $25 per user per month for its business offering, and $99 per month for its API plan, based on the volume of signature requests made per month.
The startup has raised just under $20 million since its founding in 2011. It graduated from Y Combinator’s Winter 2011 batch as HelloFax but pivoted soon after to automate additional features, including printing, signing, scanning, and sending.
Existing investors that joined today’s round include US Venture Partners, Joshua Reeves, Paul Buchheit, Tien Tzuo, and Webb Investment Networks. HelloSign will use the fresh capital to further develop its product and to grow its team of 66 employees.
