Dropbox is jumping into the e-signature market with a major acquisition.
Dropbox said Monday it is acquiring HelloSign, a document signing and workflow company for $230 million. Dropbox is mostly associated with file storing and sharing, but the acquisition expands the company’s reach and puts it in competition with companies like DocuSign and Adobe.
In a blog post, Dropbox said the workforce is getting more de-centralized, but the tools to help people in different locations share and collaborate on documents haven’t kept up. The acquisition furthers Dropbox’s goal of becoming “a place for people to come together to co-create and collaborate on their content — connecting people with the functionality they need to do their best work,” according to the blog post.
HelloSign boasts more than 80,000 customers. The two companies first became acquainted late last year as part of a series Dropbox extensions added to major productivity tools. Interestingly enough, those extension partnerships included e-signature programs from DocuSign and Adobe.
Dropbox stock is down slightly this morning. The company went public in March 2018, and while it’s stock is still up from the initial asking price of $21, it has lost about 17 percent of its value since the first day of trading.
