I turned down $500k, pissed off my investors, and shut down my startup (2016)

Re:I turned down $500k, pissed off my investors, and shut do... by yashap on Saturday June 11, 2022 @12:38PM (#31705810)

It was a good read, thanks for writing it. Also, assuming this is correct:

> Almost no SMB views contract management as an urgent problem.

And I think it probably is, then IMO you made the right decision. I don’t know the space very well, but my gut feel would be SMBs don’t have real CLM needs like Enterprises do, they mostly just need something like DocuSign. Taking the money and pivoting might have worked, but I agree, it’s a massive risk in terms of your time and your team’s jobs.

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Re:I turned down $500k, pissed off my investors, and shut do... by coverband on Saturday June 11, 2022 @06:03PM (#31708887)

DocuSign actually offers an integrated CLM product, built on top of a smaller company they acquired a while back. With everything also integrated with Salesforce, etc., it makes automation pretty easy.

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Re:I turned down $500k, pissed off my investors, and shut do... by yashap on Saturday June 11, 2022 @07:47PM (#31709642)

Ah interesting, didn’t know that. Certainly their main use case that drove their growth, though, has been a simple “get signatures on a document over the internet” product.

Also, if the CLM product targets a Salesforce integration, sounds like it’s more of an Enterprise than SMB product? While their core e-signature product targets both SMBs and Enterprise.

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