Blog
Electronic signatures, data rooms and document sharing, explained
Notes on electronic signatures, secure sharing, negotiation and attention — mostly about why XDocs behaves the way it does, which is usually a decision somebody had to argue for.
The XDocs team6 min read
How to set up a startup data room for a seed round
A seed data room is not a miniature M&A room. It is a dozen documents, a sensible index and two levels of access — and most founders put too much in it, too early.
Read itEverything else
- Negotiation
6 min read
What is a master services agreement, and when do you need an SOW?
An MSA settles the legal terms once; a statement of work describes each job. Splitting them is how agencies and their clients stop renegotiating liability every time the scope changes.
- Negotiation
6 min read
NDA vs confidentiality agreement: is there a difference? Plus mutual vs one-way
Legally, no — the two names describe the same contract. The choices that do matter are which way the information flows, how long the promise lasts and what it leaves out.
- Negotiation
6 min read
Independent contractor vs employee: what the contract has to say
A contractor agreement cannot make somebody a contractor. What it can do is describe a relationship that really is one — and the clauses that do that are not the ones most people worry about.
- Signatures
6 min read
How to sign a PDF on iPhone, Android, Mac and Windows
Every major platform can put a signature on a PDF without buying anything. Here is the built-in route on each, the free tool for when there is none, and the point at which a picture of a signature stops being enough.
- Signatures
7 min read
Are electronic signatures legally binding? ESIGN, UETA, eIDAS and the exceptions
For most business agreements in the US, the EU and the UK, yes. The interesting part is the short list of documents where the answer is still no.
- Signatures
5 min read
What makes an electronic signature binding
The law asks for four things, and the drawn squiggle is not one of them. Three of the four happen before the signer touches a field.
- Signatures
4 min read
Why we freeze the document at send
The moment an agreement goes out for signature it stops being one document and becomes two. Most tools hide that. We would rather say it out loud.
- Assistant
5 min read
An assistant you can hold to account
Letting software act on your agreements is a trust problem, not a model problem. Nine things we built before we let it send anything.
- Negotiation
4 min read
The half of the deal that happens after you send
Document tools assume you draft and send. Real agreements come back marked up in Word, and that round trip used to happen entirely outside the product.
- Sharing
4 min read
A link should carry its own rules
The same document goes to an investor, a procurement team and a competitor's analyst. Permissions belong to the link you gave each of them, not to the file.
- Analytics
4 min read
Reading time only counts when somebody is reading
Most document analytics measure tabs, not attention. Fixing the measurement is the easy half; the hard half is making the number answer a question.
- Sharing
4 min read
Set up a diligence room before the first bidder arrives
An hour spent on the index and the permission matrix buys back a fortnight of answering the same question in four different email threads.
Or stop reading about it and try it.
Everything described here is in the product today, on the free plan.