Jay Jumper. He’s the founder, CEO and President of SIGNiX. As a highly regarded entrepreneur, Jay has worked to establish the company as the leading cloud-based digital signature solution which is a hot space. He has more than 20 years in financial services and technology management experience. Additionally, Jay graduated from University of Tennessee in 1985 with a BS in marketing.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Trump: The Art of the Deal
What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban
Favorite online tool? — Email
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5-7
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Jay would tell himself that hard work and perseverance outdoes anything else

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:45 – Nathan introduces Jay to the show
01:33 – SIGNiX is the only cloud-based digital signature company in North America
- 01:44 – SIGNiX is an independent e-signature solution
02:00 – Jay shows Nathan a visual of a cloud-based digital signature
- 02:08 – Put a signature on the overlight, not on the document
- 02:48 – You depend on the e-signature vendor to be around forever so they can validate the signature
- 02:56 – On the overlight is a hyperlink that redirects the person to the e-signature provider
03:38 – With SIGNiX, every signature is embedded onto the document
03:52 – SIGNiX is a SaaS model
04:08 – SIGNiX focuses on security
04:32 – 80% of SIGNiX is sold to software partners
- 04:37 – SIGNiX enables software partners to capture the e-signature market that is sitting on their software
- 05:05 – Software partners can privately label SIGNiX so they can rebrand it according to whatever the product is
05:25 – SIGNiX does a revenue share with their software partners
05:32 – SIGNiX gives their software partners a highly robust digital signature solution
06:08 – SIGNiX’s pricing on their website
- 06:10 – $240 per seat equals to 240 transactions a year
06:22 – SIGNiX’s emphasis is on supporting their partners
06:54 – SIGNiX goes to different industries and tries to match pricing based on the industry
07:37 – SIGNiX has very robust APIs which is the core of the business
08:11 – The key things that SIGNiX offers: everything is embedded in the document and documents can be deleted from SIGNiX
- 08:18 – A dependent e-signature always has 2 copies, one for the company and one for the customer
09:04 – What SIGNiX is doing is much more difficult
09:30 – Team size is 50
10:00 – SIGNiX was launched in 2002 and was acquired from another company
10:12 – ProNvest is a robo advisor that Jay also owns
10:45 – SIGNiX is a bigger revenue stream for Jay
10:57 – The market for e-signature is very large
11:35 – ProNvest provides management counseling to the 41K marketplace
- 11:47 – In 2007, more people in 41K are taking their money out rather than contributing
- 12:06 – Jay really wanted a tool set to work with their 41K providers to help them retain their assets
- 12:17 – Jay wanted the providers to retain their assets through electronic signatures
12:24 – SIGNiX called Jay
- 12:40 – The company was struggling and Jay became an investor in the company
- 12:52 – Jay invested around 50% of the company
- 13:05 – There was an offer from a public company to buy the company after Jay invested
- 13:22 – The offer was 5x what Jay paid for
- 14:00 – In 2001, it was good to have a “.com” but in 2002, Jay needed to have revenue
14:23 – Jay saw the need for having SIGNiX regardless of its previous company struggles
14:33 – Jay really bolted SIGNiX and passed it on an incubator
15:04 – The previous company just spent money on the technology and was burning cash
15:43 – SIGNiX now has 670K customers
- 15:52 – It is a combination of seats and customers
16:30 – Average MRR
16:57 – SIGNiX gives discounts to their partners
17:18 – If you’re working with a software company, you have to figure out a number that works for their customers
18:02 – The number that Jay gave was an annual number
18:20 – SIGNiX does not focus on their competitors because they have a very different product
18:48 – SIGNiX wants to go and find the top software developers in every industry and partner with them
- 19:03 – First thing that SIGNiX looks for in a software partner is their position and role in their particular industry
- 19:10 – Ziplogix partnered with SIGNiX and named their solution, Digital Ink
- 19:25 – SIGNiX has a large portion of realtors in their network
- 19:35 – SIGNiX doesn’t mind being behind the scenes
19:55 – SIGNiX is not a reseller and it becomes the key feature of the product
20:18 – SIGNiX doesn’t have a standard percentage split because it varies per company
20:49 – Jay did a lot of self-funding for SIGNiX, but has also raised capital which is an 8-figure total
21:18 – ProNvest is the largest investor in SIGNiX but they needed outside investors to scale
21:38 – The funding rounds SIGNiX had in 2016 had a total of around $90M
23:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Develop and scale your product until you become a totally different product from your competitors.
A business that is struggling does NOT mean that it will struggle forever; decide if the company is worth acquiring and if you can grow it into a profitable business.
It’s okay if you’re not in the limelight—so long as you’re getting paid and revenue continues to multiply.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

685: He Loved A Product, So Acquired Whole Business with Doc Signing Signix CEO Jay Jumper

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders