Yousign (eF19) snags 30 million Series A to provide SMBs with a European alternative to the American giants
Yousign (eF19), the eSignature solution and our long-time partner, raises 30 million euros Series A. Led by Lead Edge Capital (BlaBlaCar, Wise, Spotify), this funding round will help Yousign reach its grand ambitions: to become the European alternative to American giants (Docusign, Adobe) and the leading e-signature provider for SMBs.
From 123sign to Yousign
In 2013, Luc Pallavidino, cofounder of Yousign, sent us an email asking about whether we’d be interested in launching an eSignature solution. We had just bought the 123sign.com domain name and so we ended up launching our own project. But the CTO that joined us to launch it eventually left. And the project never came into being.
Five years later and we still had 123sign.com on our mind. We got back in touch with Luc and Antoine and instantly hit it off. And so we did something we’ve never done before: invest in an already existing company. We bought a significant stake in the company and equipped Yousign with all of our unfair advantages, from our product expertise to the revamp of their go-to-market strategy.
At eFounders, we pride ourselves on our agility. We’ve learned that to build unique companies and to keep on innovating, we’ve got to constantly reinvent ourselves. Whether it’s improving our studio processes, scaling our model, or in this particular case partnering with Yousign.
Today, Yousign is an exceptional team of 120 employees and we feel incredibly lucky to have embraced our agility to be a part of this adventure.
The European champion for SMBs
With this new round of financing, Yousign has clear and bold ambitions. The team wants to rival its American competition and become the go-to solution for SMBs. More concretely, Yousign aims to equip 50,000 European SMBs with its e-signature solution by 2024
The e-signature market is huge. It will grow 25% per year until 2030 and is set to be a 10 billion euros market by then. And while the American players are big and established, we believe that there is room for a European leader and that Yousign is perfectly positioned to take over.
“Our American competitors have large scopes and complex products, we, on the other hand, have built a solution that is accessible and easy to use, allowing SMBs to sign their first documents within the hour, and not a month” says CEO of Yousign Luc Pallavidino.
Beyond the eSignature
While many companies will revert back to their old non-digital solutions as we enter the post-covid world (think going back to physical events and saying goodbye to Zoom), we think the eSignature is here to stay.
Not only that, but we believe that the eSignature is a catalyst for digitalisation. Up until covid, a huge number of companies hadn’t bothered digitising 100% of their workflows because signing still required to meet physically. The eSignature enables businesses to go much further in terms of digitalisation, With Yousign, we’re going beyond the eSignature, we’re digitising the company as a whole.
What’s next
It’s been a whirlwind couple of years! Yousign reached the 100 employee milestone, launched the One plan, and expanded into Italy and Germany. And the team is not stopping here. Yousign plans on hiring 150 additional people in the next 18 months and aims to expand its product into document automation and approval management.
Let’s see how they can top the last two years. We have a feeling they will exceed our wildest expectations, in the next two years and beyond.
