Something’s going wrong at DocuSign (DOCU), and it’s worse than it appeared a couple weeks ago. That’s the conclusion I come to after seeing longtime CEO Dan Springer step down, abruptly and apparently at the request of the Board, less than two weeks after he outlined the recent progress of DocuSign’s strategy to kick-start growth on the last quarterly conference call.

When I last wrote, a few minutes after the lsat disappointing earnings report came out, I was inclined to be patient with DocuSign, because I think it has a strong brand and some good long-term potential in the e-signature space, and the possibility of turning its Agreement Cloud service into something meaningful in the future… but that CEO departure adds another layer of risk.

Here’s a little from that earnings call transcript of about two weeks ago:

“We’re confident in our strategy and path to becoming a $5 billion revenue company. DocuSign continues to be the clear market leader in the electronic signature space, and we are excited about our progress in defining the broader Agreement Cloud category as well. Our dedication to innovation and our investments in attracting high-caliber talent position us to build upon our leading market share. Our plan to scale is well underway, and we are encouraged by the early traction we are seeing, though the level of growth in certain areas is lower than our prior expectations….

“… we are focused on a second half growth plan that allows us to be successful despite some of the current macro headwinds and gives us a foundation of sustainable and predictable growth going into fiscal year ’24.”

So they have a plan in place, they hired a bunch of new sales leaders to reorganize and reinvigorate the sales force, after a year and a half when they didn’t have to try very hard to grow or sell (there was no ‘sales’ during the pandemic, there was ‘sit back and collect these customers who are rushing in the front door’), they’ve deepened their integration with Salesforce and expanded their partnership with Microsoft, which should allow for more cross-selling, and they’ve added to their stable of large customers. At the end of his prepared remarks on the call, Springer said…

“… we have a vast market, the industry-leading product portfolio and a growing world-class team that is focused on driving both growth and margin expansion with ...