[user3939382]

> It's a legal acceptance problem

We may be saying the same thing, but just to clarify / put another way: it's a legal compliance problem. DocuSign is admissible (in the US) because it adheres to the state and Federal regulations that have been passed which carefully enumerate the requirements of legally acceptable digitally signed documents, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Signatures_in_Globa...

It's lower risk in a corporation with a lot to lose to say, here's this implementation that we know is compliant, than to say, we made our own or used an obscure one and we think it is. Corporate politics will usually encourage decision makers to go with the former.

[voakbasda]

I believe that Docusign helped to draft parts of that legislation. They are a deeply entrenched player that has made regulatory capture part of their strategy. Disrupting them will be hard to impossible for that reason alone.

[user3939382]

I have a lot of experience implementing software for a heavily regulated industry. The first challenge is, because of the legal architecture -- go study and diff the legal code for each of the 50 states to implement a tool like this, also, track all the updates to those laws.

I wouldn't be surprised by DocuSign's involvement as you describe, we have the same corruption in every industry, justified always by the same excuse "They're the experts! Who else would we (congress) ask?" I don't believe the ignorance of the massive conflict of interest in this approach is a coincidence but I digress.

[bombcar]

Also remember that the way DocuSign works it is the company paying for it, not the people signing. That makes it even harder to disrupt, because the "great majority of users" are used to the DocuSign workflow and aren't paying and have no incentive to change.

[ghaff]

And while I'm sure DocuSign is a very profitable product line, I also suspect that for many companies that use it (like financial firms) its cost is somewhere around their paper clip budget.

[bombcar]

Yep. My first few mortgages involved getting all the right people in a room together at the same time and signing hundreds of documents, the last two were some websites and clicking.

The amount of time not lost having people watch me perform magic with the pen must have saved way more than DocuSign cost.

[ghaff]

I was seeing a discussion the other week about automation and someone was saying that, as a consumer, not that much has really been automated. We still need a person to clean the house, do the yardwork, cook (yes you can get meal delivery but again in urban areas that's not new), etc. Even if we do have major appliances they're pretty similar to what we've had for decades.

While that's true, it probably leaves out a lot of tasks that involved writing checks, running errands, going to various offices to sign things, etc. that have been, if not entirely eliminated, certainly cut back on.