DocuSign is reshuffling almost half its board, with founder Tom Gonser among those leaving as part of what it called a “planned transition” to a public company.
Gonser, chairman and former CEO Keith Krach, and three venture capitalists are resigning while three executives with extensive tech experience — former GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving, Docker CEO Steve Singh, and IBM Watson general manager Inhi Cho Suh — will join the board.
The new board members “bring a wealth of experience across the public and private sector. And they bring unique perspectives in the areas of SaaS, big data, artificial intelligence, and serving customers from the largest enterprises to the very smallest businesses,” DocuSign CEO Dan Springer, who succeeded Krach last year, said in a news release.
“This will offer a vital contribution to our growth and evolution as a newly-public company,” he added.
DocuSign said in a regulatory filing that the decision of Gonser and the other departing directors to resign was “not a result of any disagreement with us on any matter relating to our operations, policies, or practices.”
The electronic signature company went public in April at $29 a share and has surged 79% to close at $51.98 on Wednesday. It said Gonser and Krach will depart the board at the end of the year, while Jonathan Roberts, Scott Darling, and Rory O’Driscoll will step down at the end of August.
“Each have helped write important chapters of the DocuSign story,” Springer said.
Among the new board members, Irving has more than 25 years of leadership experience at public corporate and consumer technology companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo and GoDaddy.
“In the SaaS industry, it’s rare to see a company create a category from scratch, grow to lead that category, and then continue its innovation arc by extending to meet an even broader set of business challenges,” he said of DocuSign.
“I’ve worked across a spectrum of enterprise technologies, so I can appreciate the impact that DocuSign is already having in that space — and its vast potential for the future,” Singh said.