DocuSign hires seasoned Google executive as new CEO

DocuSign shares rose more than 3% in extended trading after the electronic signature software maker announced it has hired an Alphabet executive, Allan Thygesen, to be its next CEO. The announcement comes three month after DocuSign said its CEO for the past five years, Dan Springer, was stepping down.

Like other cloud software companies, DocuSign enjoyed a wave of greater interest among investors during the Covid pandemic as consumers and corporate workers became more reliant on digital ways to sign documents. But the interest has died down. Notwithstanding the after-hours move, DocuSign shares have fallen 64% so far this year.

On Oct. 10 Thygesen will replace DocuSign’s chair and interim CEO, Maggie Wilderotter, and join the company’s board. Thygesen has spent nearly 12 years at Alphabet subsidiary Google, where he was most recently president of Americas and global partners. In that role he was responsible for $100 billion in Google advertising revenue, according to his LinkedIn profile. He sits on the board of cloud communications company RingCentral.

“DocuSign has a long history of delivering the most trusted, fully-integrated platform for digital agreements, and I am honored to lead the company in its next great chapter,” Thygesen was quoted as saying in a statement. “We have a $50 billion global market opportunity that is largely untapped. I look forward to working with our world-class team to capture that opportunity by growing our diversified customer base across industries and geographies.”

Earlier this month DocuSign reported 22% revenue growth in the quarter that ended July 31, compared with 58% growth in 2021.

The company went public on Nasdaq in 2018, and it primarily competes with Adobe, which offers the Acrobat Sign service. Springer said at a UBS conference in December that Adobe is “focused on a value sell that says, ‘Hey, we’re not going to be able to be as good as DocuSign.’”

In June, as investors were growing tired of money-losing stocks and looking toward more defensive investments that could withstand rising interest rates, DocuSign issued results that came in short of analysts’ expectations, sending the stock down almost 25%.

Thygesen will receive restricted stock units in addition to his other compensation if the company can hit certain stock targets, according to a regulatory filing. CNBC