DocuSign expects IPO by early 2018, says CEO

Newswire: July 19, 2017.

Dateline: San Francisco.

DocuSign, a founding member of the Electronic Signature & Records Association, expects to make an initial public offering of its stock by early next year, ending ongoing speculation about when it would become a publicly traded company.

DocuSign’s chief executive, Daniel Springer, told Marketwatch of the plans to go public. “I would be surprised by early next year if we weren’t filing or public,” Springer said.

In April, DocuSign co-founder Tom Gonser said the company was “in no rush” to do an IPO yet was mindful of the possibility. Since then, DocuSign’s revenue and cash flow have met common thresholds for taking a company public, according to Springer.

DocuSign has 300,000 paying customers, mainly enterprise clients in banking, real estate, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications. Forrester Research estimates DocuSign controlled 40 percent of the e-signature market as of 2016, and The Wall Street Journal has valued the company at $3 billion based on funding it raised in 2015.

Springer was hired in January to replace Keith Krach, concluding a 15-month search for a new CEO. Springer had been the chief executive of Responsys, leading it through an IPO and eventually its acquisition by Oracle in 2014.

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