Docusign CEO: Networking isn’t about cocktail parties

Allan Thygesen has been CEO of Docusign since 2022. The US tech firm was founded in 2003 and pioneered e-signatures for online documents. Under Thygesen’s leadership, it is focusing on the use of artificial intelligence to manage digital agreements.

Thygesen grew up in Denmark before working in several tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. He joined Docusign from Google, where he had been president of the Americas and responsible for $100bn (£80bn) in advertising revenue.

Docusign has annual revenues of more than $2bn and employs over 6,000 people globally. It is Thygesen’s first role as CEO. His philosophy on business networking helped him to land the position, he explains.

“Too many people think that networking is about cocktail parties,” says Thygesen. “But it’s actually about being helpful to others and paying it forward.”

“Every major job change I’ve made has been directly connected to people I worked with before who I’ve come to know really, really well. People underestimate that. Networking has a brand problem, it’s now about shallowness, not about being relevant and meaningful to people.”

Thygesen says he decided to apply for the job at Docusign after he realised he knew the interim CEO very well. She was the chair of the board and had stepped in temporarily. This gave him the impetus to put himself forward for the CEO role.

Docusign made its name with e-signatures more than two decades ago. It is now expanding thanks to investment in artificial intelligence. Its intelligent agreement management (IAM) platform uses AI to help companies draw up contracts efficiently and also analyse and interpret at speed the data “locked” in them, at scale.

Docusign has more than 1.6 million customers in over 180 countries, with Europe its fastest-growing market.