Dropbox buys electronic signature start-up HelloSign for $230 million

Dropbox on Monday said it's acquiring electronic signature start-up HelloSign for $230 million in cash.

The move expands Dropbox's technical capabilities and puts it in competition with Adobe and DocuSign. The inorganic growth could put the company in a stronger position as it contends with the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft. Although Dropbox has exceeded analysts' estimates in each of its first three quarterly earnings reports, the company's stock growth has not growth meaningfully since its initial public offering in March.

"Coming out of the year of the IPO, the next question, of course, is, 'How are we going to continue to broaden the job we do for customers?'" Quentin Clark, senior vice president of engineering, product and design, told CNBC in an interview on Friday. This marks the largest acquisition in Dropbox's establishment in 2007.

Using HelloSign, people can apply their signatures to digital documents and ask for signatures from others. Other companies can embed the HelloSign signature system into their own software, and the technology is available inside products from Google and Salesforce, as well as Dropbox.

HelloSign also has tools for virtually faxing documents and managing the flow of paperwork, but the signature tool is the most popular, said Whitney Bouck, HelloSign's chief operating officer and a former Box executive.

For now HelloSign will operate independently, with HelloSign CEO Joseph Walla reporting to Clark. HelloSign will operate independently, although the idea is to have Dropbox's sales organization try to bring in more business for HelloSign, Clark said. Meanwhile, Dropbox will continue to work with other electronic signature providers.

"We have to maintain this neutrality," Clark said.

HelloSign was founded in 2010 and, like Dropbox, is based in San Francisco. The company has around 117 employees, according to LinkedIn data. Investors include Alphabet's GV, Greylock Partners, U.S. Venture partners and Silicon Valley start-up accelerator Y Combinator. HelloSign has around 80,000 customers, including Intuit, Lyft, Samsung and Twitter.

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