DocuSign Shoots for Valuation Above $1 Billion
By Evelyn M. Rusli and Douglas MacMillan
Wall Street Journal
3:38 pm, Feb 13, 2014
DocuSign may soon be the latest entrant to the billion-dollar startup club.
The electronic signature software company is in the process of raising about $100 million, in a deal that could value the company as high as $1.5 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter. Morgan Stanley is helping DocuSign with the fund-raising, two of these people said.
A DocuSign spokesperson declined to comment. Morgan Stanley also declined to comment.
The company has been growing at a furious pace, amid mounting anticipation for an initial public offering.
Last year, DocuSign roughly doubled its headcount to 650 people and plans to add hundreds more this year. In December, Mike Dinsdale, the company’s chief financial officer, told Dow Jones VentureWire that “an IPO is logical at some point.”
Founded more than a decade ago, DocuSign is one of the largest cloud-based, electronic signature software companies. Its software, which has more than 48 million customers, is used by a broad range of industries to facilitate the signing of sensitive contracts and legal documents. Its last major round of funding was in 2012, when it raised $47.5 million from a large group of venture capital backs, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
The move comes as many technology companies prep for the public markets. Online storage company Box recently filed for an IPO, a person briefed on the matter has said, just months after securing a $100 million in fundraising. Meanwhile, Woodman Labs, a maker of wearable cameras doing business as GoPro, announced earlier this month, that it has also filed to go public.
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