Document workflow and e-signature service provider HelloSign has now been acquired by cloud-based file sharing and syncing provider Dropbox, for a whopping $230 million in cash. This acquisition adds tools for digitally signing contracts and documents on the Dropbox platform.
Per the deal, HelloSign will remain an independent business. The San Francisco-based company already has a product for use in Dropbox, and now the two platforms will combine to get more Dropbox users to choose HelloSign for documents that require signatures. The deal is expected to close this quarter.
“This deal makes sense from a strategic standpoint for two reasons: 1) HelloSign seems like a positive complementary business product to sell; and, 2) The acquisition provides a potential opportunity to further expand enterprise sales and win more share of the customer wallet,” Mark Mahaney, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note to investors on Monday.
“Millions of people are still using pen and paper to sign important documents or using these workflows that have a ton of steps,” Dropbox CEO Drew Houston said in an interview. The product fits well with Dropbox’s goal of helping workers share, edit and manage files, he said.
“What is unique about HelloSign is that the investment they’ve made in APIs and the workflow products is really so aligned with our long-term direction,” Dropbox’s SVP of Engineering, Quentin Clark told TechCrunch. “It’s not just a thing to do one more activity with Dropbox, it’s really going to help us pursue that broader vision,” he added. That vision involves extending the storage capabilities that are at the core of the Dropbox solution.
HelloSign CEO Joseph Walla says being part of Dropbox gives HelloSign access to resources of a much larger public company, which should allow it to reach a broader market than it could on its own. “Together with Dropbox, we can bring more seamless document workflows to even more customers and dramatically accelerate our impact,” Walla said in a blog post announcing the deal.
“We’re going to remain effectively a standalone business within the Dropbox family so that we can continue to focus on developing the great products that we have and delivering value. So the good news is that our customers won’t really experience any massive change. They just get more opportunity,” Whitney Bouck, COO at HelloSign said.
