Agree.com, the e-Signature platform, raised new funding for $7.2 million.
The mentioned company announced the seed round during a conversation with media representatives. The firm also noted its willingness to compete with brands such as Docusign. In the relevant context, the company separately drew attention to its main feature, which is that its platform offers consumers payment processing and invoicing.
Agree.com chief executive officer Marty Ringlein, while talking to media representatives, said that at the end of almost every signature, someone has to pay someone money. According to him, the company will combine what has historically been a disjointed and fragmented workflow to make signing better and payments faster.
Agree.com makes money from transaction fees for any movement of funds carried out by its platform. At the same time, the company made e-signatures free for users.
The firm uses artificial intelligence along with optimal character software to auto-detect and label all of a contract’s input fields and signature blocks. Moreover, in this case, it is possible to identify and extract payment terms to dynamically generate invoices.
Marty Ringlein believes that as a result of the company’s multitasking approach, Agree.com has the potential to replace traditional e-signature and invoicing and accounts receivable tools like Bill.com. According to him, the company extracts every character, indentation, semicolon, and hyphen to not only understand the type of contract being signed, but make it fully editable and collaborative with commenting, redlining, and version control.
The firm received funding at a time when many business processes, traditionally identified as manual, are being replaced with more digital versions.
Agree.com was founded in February 2024. Last year, the company raised $3 million in a pre-seed funding round. This round was led by Sheel Mohnot, a general partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures. The latest fundraiser was oversubscribed and led by Tyler Hogge at Pelion Venture Partners. According to media reports, citing an anonymous insider familiar with the details of the mentioned process, funding for the raise took only two weeks.
Although the company competes primarily with Docusign, its business model provides for the concept of functioning as a fintech brand through B2B payments.
According to media reports, at present, the prospects for the further development of the firm seem promising. In the first half of September last year, the brand had 10,000 customers. Seven weeks later, this indicator showed significant growth, exceeding the 20,000 mark. The company currently has over 25,000 users, including networks such as Beehiiv and Product Hunt, B2B SaaS startups such as Rho and TaxGPT, and enterprise sales teams like Brico and Thoropass.
The firm proposes a premium offering for large teams. In this case, it means the charging of the traditional monthly SaaS fee per seat. The mentioned offering also provides an opportunity to monetize invoicing and billing logic on transaction volume.
The company currently has seven employees, including co-founders Will Hubbard, chief operating officer, and Evan Dudla, chief technical officer.
It is worth noting separately that in the past, all the founders have launched and sold several startups. Marty Ringlein sold design agency nclud to Twitter in May 2012 for an undisclosed amount. Four years later, Mr. Ringlein, Evan Dudla, and the firm’s chief procurement officer Mike Dick sold a startup nvite to Eventbrite. In 2020, they sold Gather to Brex.
Will Hubbard started his first company as a junior at UC Berkeley. In this case, the air-quality monitoring startup ChemiSense is meant. He ran the mentioned startup for about six years and sold it to Kaiterra in 2019. Will Hubbard then founded the next Niche company, verticalized community marketplaces. In 2020, this brand was acquired by Opera Event.
Moreover, Will Hubbard and Marty Ringlein launched the early-stage venture firm Adventure Fund, which has invested in brands such as Beehiiv and Mercury.
In the context of reflections on the development plan Agree.com Pelion partner Tyler Hogge stated in a media comment that the smartest way to get the massive adoption would be to use e-signature as the wedge, give it away for free, and make it impossible for inclusions to reply. Besides, it was noted that the company’s business model is truly unique, as it includes free software and is monetized through invoicing and payments.
Blank Ventures and angel investor Gokul Rajaram participated in the seed round. Moreover, doubled their investments of all existing backers, including Better Tomorrow Ventures, 8-Bit Capital, Sophia Amoruso’s Trust Fund, Hustle Fund, Everywhere Ventures, Singh Capital Partners, and Firsthand VC.
The company currently operates primarily in the United States. At the same time, the firm has plans to expand the geography of its business, starting with Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Returning to the topic of digitalization of business processes, which were traditionally perceived as manual, it is worth noting that the shift underpinned by machine-readable formats, API-first ecosystems, and continuous data flows that allowed for automation at a scale have already been implemented. For enterprises, adapting to structured data standards such as ISO 20022 for payments and investing in systems that can learn from transactional patterns is an important step towards improving efficiency.
Eric Frankovic, WEX president of corporate payments, said last month during a conversation with media representatives that the really progressive companies are getting in front of the transition to digital payments. It was also noted that the firms have to cut costs, to control costs, and to keep a healthy supply chain.
The above-mentioned shift is not only related to the digitalization of processes. Also in this case, among other things, it implies a rethinking of back-office operations in a world where artificial intelligence and real-time data are gradually becoming the norm. The corresponding wording implies that AI and the mentioned type of data are no longer actually some kind of innovative solution that is used either in the framework of non-large-scale practices related to what can be called rare cases or in the format of experimentation with uncertain results.
The results of a special industry study indicate that currently in the United States, more than 80% of chief financial officers either already use artificial intelligence or are considering adopting it for core financial functions such as accounts payable, or for paying suppliers, vendors, and contractors.
It is worth noting that the practice of using digital intelligence by chief financial officers also contributes to improving the efficiency of funds management. Moreover, in this case, the use of artificial intelligence allows you to automate on average up to 80% of accounting operations, including reconciliation of transactions and payment processing. Moreover, chief financial officers can leverage machine intelligence to predict cash flows, analyze risks, and identify reporting anomalies. They also use artificial intelligence to make more informed strategic decisions related to capital restructuring, investments, mergers, and acquisitions. Besides, machine learning can analyze market trends and help minimize financial risks. The practice of using artificial intelligence also provides for the formulation of individual financial strategies. Another advantage of AI from the point of view of chief financial officers is the ability to improve the customer experience.
Returning to the topic of using e-signature, it is worth noting that in the fintech industry, it ensures the security and convenience of digital transactions. In this case, data protection is guaranteed. In the relevant context, it is worth noting that e-signature guarantees the authenticity of documents and minimizes the risks of their forgery. Proponents of more traditional processes and tools may be skeptical about the perceived inferiority of this advanced method of authentication and confirmation of data integrity in a virtual format. In this context, it is worth noting that e-signature has the same legal force as a standard signature. At the same time, the concept of a standard is relative and may change, including fundamentally and radically, over time. This means that e-signature may become a kind of common standard in the future. The current tendencies of global digitalization of processes lead exactly to this. In the fintech sector, the e-signature leverage practice also has advantages such as speeding up the processing of payments, loan applications, and other operations. Moreover, this practice helps to identify users and prevent fraud. Also important for the fintech sector is a kind of universal advantage of e-signature, such as speeding up document flow. It is worth noting that this is an advantage sought by all industries that want to simplify routine tasks to be able to focus on more important issues, including in a strategic sense.
As we have reported earlier, Duna Raises Investments to Bolster Business Identity Platform.
