[Alumni Story] Elliot BOUCHER and Dylan TEIXEIRA, founders of Edusign: showing signs of success
03/01/2022
Signing in on paper is a thing of the past! When Dylan Teixeira and Elliot Boucher (both graduated from the Grande École Program in 2021) developed Edusign while they were still students at IÉSEG, they could never have imagined the exciting journey that lay ahead. Three years after its launch, their digital signature solution has already won over more than 600,000 users worldwide and recently allowed them to raise one million euros. We look back on a success story built on pragmatism and determination…
How did you come up with the idea for Edusign?
While we were students at IÉSEG, we occasionally forgot to sign in or attendance sheets got lost. What we noticed was that the management of registration documents was hardly ever digitised, it was a time-consuming process, with low added value while at the same time being essential to the smooth running of the School. We therefore decided to develop Edusign, a simple and secure online signature solution. Our complementary skills (technical and marketing) allowed us to design everything in-house, but we were also lucky to have a lot of support, particularly from IÉSEG. The School was the ideal setting to try out our concept in the field, to get early feedback and improve on the idea until the official launch. Winning the IÉSEG Entrepreneur 2020 prize was also a feather in our cap and gave the project legitimacy. We then continued to try it out in other establishments… and then along came Covid.
What effect did the pandemic have on the project?
With the introduction of distance learning, demand literally exploded which helped Edusign rank well in Google searches. The pandemic persuaded many organisations to adopt our solution and go 100% digital. The Covid crisis has changed the way people think and it’s now inconceivable for our customers to go back to paper format! Edusign was created for them and with them: the thousands of discussions we had and the user feedback we obtained enabled us to offer a tailor-made solution. This innovative and intuitive approach has already been taken up by more than 1,200 schools and companies.
What is your business plan based on?
We offer a monthly subscription (from €24.99 per month) or an annual one depending on the options chosen and the number of signatures. It’s a worthwhile investment since a lost paper register can be very costly and require considerable manual processing. We have just raised one million euros to help us move up a gear: improving the fluidity and reliability of the concept, developing new services and products (electronic signature of documents, questionnaires, creating connected devices, etc. ) and recruiting the dream team. There are currently 15 of us and we are constantly on the lookout for new talent (work-study trainees, interns, graduates)…
Edusign is truly a success story “made in and by IÉSEG”…
Absolutely! The School gave us the time to freely develop our idea and provided us with logistical help and manpower. It also taught us the fundamental skills we needed (finance, law, etc.), but it was above all the people we met that made the difference: students, companies and partners. And in any case, Edusign wouldn’t exist at all if we hadn’t met in the lecture theatre at IÉSEG…
This article was written by Luna Créations for IÉSEG Network’s magazine, IÉS #12.