In December 2024 I was perusing twitter (as I am fond of doing) and came across this company, Agree.com. Not long after I sent a DM to Marty Ringlein, the co-founder and CEO.
That night, Marty and I spent an hour or so chatting on twitter. I shared with him how excited I get by free software + payments monetization from my time at Divvy (and even Wealthfront before that). We clicked pretty fast
.
So I flew out to NYC before Christmas with my partner Chad, and we met with the Agree.com team in a coffee shop near Wall Street.
Soon after we agreed 🙂 to lead Agree.com’s seed round.
Why did we get so excited? Several reason:
- I believe the era of high-priced SaaS is behind us. I just don’t get as excited by it anymore.
- From my time at Divvy, I am primed for excitement when I see an opportunity to give SaaS away for free, and then monetize in a clever way, usually via payments.
- The combination of a product innovation + a business model innovation is a massive tailwind.
- On top of the free software + payments monetization, I have also been fascinated that no one has truly been able to build a big company via accounts receivable / invoicing.
- If you can truly own the e-signature as the free wedge, this gives you a right to win the full contract agreement. And If you win the agreement, you have a right to win the invoice. And if you can truly own the invoice, you can own the payments. It’s clear as day to me.
- In other words, no one had married Docusign + BILL.com together to build the ultimate E-signature to AR
- Combined with these structural advantages, you have an exceptional team. Marty and Will and Evan have clear superpowers that happen to exactly match what this business needs to become enduring.
It’s also worth also mentioning: Agree benefits from Clayton Christensens’s disruptive innovation. When a startup has a structural advantage that allows them to serve a segment of the market that an incumbent cannot, the incumbent has a very hard time responding. Why? Because it is un-economic for them to do so! How can Docusign compete with free? And if that free product is actually significantly better designed too? Good luck.
Which is why I strongly believe different is better than better. And Agree.com is different.
You probably pay for Docusign today. And you should not. In a world where SaaS costs will drop, the first one you should replace is e-signature. If you want to see a demo, just let me know, and I’ll connect you do the founders.
Sounds pretty great - agree?