Yousign raises $36.6 million to build a European alternative to DocuSign

French startup Yousign has raised a $36.6 million Series A funding round (€30 million). Lead Edge Capital is leading the round and eFounders is investing once again in the company. Yousign, as the name suggests, is an e-signature provider that complies with European regulation on digital signatures.

While the company was originally founded in 2013, Yousign teamed up with startup studio eFounders in 2019. Following this deal, eFounders has become a key shareholders and a strategic partner.

Things have changed quite a lot since then as the e-signature market has grown tremendously. You may be familiar with DocuSign, Adobe Sign, SignNow, HelloSign and a bunch of other players. But none of them have been designed for the European market from the ground up.

Yousign wants to become the European alternative to these American companies. More specifically, the startup thinks it can convince small and medium companies that aren’t using an e-signature solution yet. Instead of asking DocuSign customers to switch, Yousign wants to convert new customers to e-signatures.

“Faced with American giants with large scopes and complex products, we 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” Yousign co-founder and CEO Luc Pallavidino said in a statement.

Yousign is a certification authority and complies with eIDAS — a European framework for e-signatures. It means that signatures are legally binding and the service archives your documents in partnership with Arkhineo.

Like other e-signature services, you can create document templates, approval workflows and reminders. Yousign makes sure the right person is signing the document with strong authentication processes and all events are timestamped. It’s a SaaS product, which means you have to pay a subscription fee to access the service.

With today’s funding round, Yousign wants to reach 50,000 European SMBs by 2024 — it has 6,000 clients today. That would represent an annual recurring revenue of $85 million (€70 million). In 2020 alone, the company grew drastically from 35 to 120 employees. The startup now plans to hire 150 additional employees over the next 18 months.