
HelloFax (YC W11) Launches HelloSign to Take On Electronic Signature Industry - erin_bury
http://betakit.com/2012/08/01/hellofax-launches-hellosign-to-take-on-electronic-signature-industry
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mchusma
I find this to be a fascinating example of the Y-Combinator effect. SignNow
has been doing this for six months now, on mobile and the web, with the top
ranked signing iOS app. Then they launched Online Notarization, after fighting
years to get it legalized and rolled out. Despite all this, they've gotten
barely a mention on TechCrunch, and PG shut down their Online Notarization
post. SignNow & others can absolutely be fabulously successful, but
Y-combinator in my mind really makes your life easier in a lot of ways.

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sadga
Not everyone who works with electronic signatures reads HN or TechCrunch,
though.

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mchusma
Agreed. It's just an interesting advantage. I don't think it makes you
successful, clearly most Y-Combinator companies still fail.

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sgrove
This is awesome. I've recommended HelloFax dozens of times in the past year
and a half or so for the awesome collaborative signing flow, and only a
handful of time for the fax - though it's a lifesaver when I need to fax
things.

The more widespread adoption electronic signatures get, the more convenient
life will be in general. And more secure too - we've obviously understood
secure digital signatures for awhile, but the cultural shift has just taken
_forever_ to move online.

I'd be curious to hear from the founders if there are plans around expanding
the scope/security of signatures, and some of the worries around mutually-
compatible implementations?

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dylanz
Nobody has mentioned RightSignature yet. They've been around for a while, and
I've used their services for a long time as well (...and, helped bootstrap the
codebase).

That said, I like the simple UI of Hello Sign thus far... but, I got a never-
ending spinner when I tried to draw and submit a signature... and, when I
tried to upload a document (it hung at "Converting...").

The price is definitely right, that's for sure. I'm very curious to see what
the paid features are going to be... and how long things are going to be free.
Running clusters of high powered document converting machines is not cheap!

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pdenya
We had some load balancer issues. This should be fixed now but if you're still
seeing any issues try logging out and logging back in.

-Paul, HF Dev

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navditt
This is fantastic - I just sent a prospect a proposal to execute. I had
thought about EchoSign but I just didn't want to deal with what looked to be
an enterprise-y solution. I just emailed HelloSign support asking if it was
possible to copy and paste a link to a document that needs signing so that I
can paste that link into my Basecamp messages to my prospects. For now I
prepare my Basecamp message and prepare the document for signature and ensure
I post the BC message a few seconds ahead of sending the proposal via
HelloSign.

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joelandren
Hi, we actually have a reusable link feature, so if you have an NDA or
onboarding docs that you need on a regular basis, you can upload the file and
share the link.

Could be used on a one-time basis as well. Check the "reusable docs" tab on
the left hand nav.

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anandkulkarni
I've been secretly hoping HelloFax would make this move for a while.

100% of the time I use HelloFax, I'm using it to sign things. This is a step
in exactly the right direction.

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arram
We just fully onboarded a new employee without a single piece of physical
paper thanks to HelloSign (HelloFax). It's awesome and saves us hours a week.

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hkyeti
Makes a lot of sense from use case and branding perspective. Always used their
product just to sign docs, and never to send or receive faxes.

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sunil137
Like someone else mentioned, the YCombinator effect makes the startup's life
easier than the rest.In the long run, whoever innovates faster and listen to
customer's needs better will win the race, it might be one company or more
than one company similar to how enterprise esignature market has been
dominated by top 2-3 companies so far. SignEasy App has been enabling mobile
esignatures since July, 2010 and in fact, it was one of the first in bringing
the novelty of esignatures using an iPhone/iPad and consistently ranked in top
50 business apps worldwide.

At the end, all of the new startups are all trying to make digital signature
universally accessible to everyone and trying to innovate better as compared
to the status-quo.

Thanks, Sunil Patro

Disclaimer: I am the founder of SignEasy App (Formerly EasySignMobile).

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snowmaker
Finally!! I've been hoping HelloFax would do this for months now. This is
exactly the right move and a good lesson for other companies that are faced
with a similar two use-case problem.

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gst
Isn't there some commonly accepted cryptographic digital signature standard in
the US, as it's the case in many European countries (where the user's keys are
basically certified by a government agency)? Using simple pictures as "digital
signatures" seems like multiple steps backwards to me.

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joelandren
Hi,

Our signatures are compliant with all US and EU digital signature laws:

2000 U.S. Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN)
Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) European Directive (EC/1999/93)

More info can be found here: <http://www.hellosign.com/info/legal>

-Joel from HelloSign

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cdunn
lol. ui rip much? classy

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omarchowdhury
Who did they rip?

