What’s it like to be CFO of a firm that has grown from 50 employees to more than 1,000 in less than 5 years? Join us as DocuSign CFO Mike Dinsdale returns to CFO Thought Leader to update us on the firm’s global dimensions.

On Visa’s Strategic Investment DocuSign

“Over the next 10 years, DocuSign and Visa are going to be able to do a lot of interesting things together. Embedding payments into transactions is maybe the most obvious, but look a little further and you realize that building a consistent global identity that is trusted is incredibly valuable. The two brands are initially doing the same thing, and we believe that ultimately there is a lot of product synergy as we look to roll this out over the next 5 years.”

Metrics: Setting Your Standards

“When I first joined DocuSign, people did not understand what our SaaS metrics were. They didn’t understand best-in-breed around MRR (monthly recurring revenue) and around compensation plans, or whether they should use MRR or ACV (annual contract value), or even know what the standard was. My point is that you have to set up a standard so that you can always compare yourself apples-to-apples with other companies.”

Preparing to Scale Upward

“There was something like 50 people when I joined the company. Today, we’re heading toward 1,000 people, and by the end of 2014, we should be at about 1,250 employees. Now the challenge becomes how to set ourselves up so that we can scale and become a 10,000 employee company. It’s a completely different world as you go through these different gates.”