DocSend
company on 11 shows · 18 statements across 5 episodes · said 71 times in 26 episodes since 2016
Top Founders 35 
the a16z Podcast 9 
20VC 7 
We Live to Build 6 
TBPN 5 
the Official SaaStr Podcast 4 
the Pitch 2 
My First Million 1 
the Startup Ideas Podcast 1 
A Product Market Fit Show 1 
More or Less
Mentions by year, every show
tap a year for its mentions
Top Founders 35the a16z Podcast 920VC 7We Live to Build 6TBPN 5the Official SaaStr Podcast 4the Pitch 2My First Million 12 more shows
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2024 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2023 12 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- CIA Took His Case Mid-Investigation and Never Told Him Why
- Why You're Unfundable Today: The Cold, Hard Truths About SaaS Part 2 with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
- Tomasz Tunguz: How I Raised $230M; ChatGPT vs. Google; How LLMs Work; Trump vs DeSantis | E1004 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Ophelia Brown: How We Raised $432M in a Pandemic; What's New in European Venture Capital | E990 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- From 1 man design team to $400k/year consulting for Accel
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- Clientpoint Breaks $3m ARR, Raising $5m on $45m Valuation now
- 20VC: Why the Traditional Seed Fund Model No Longer Works, Why Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed Bring Signaling Risk but also Less Pressure, The One Criteria All Potential Sales Hires Need to Have and The Clear Signs of 10x Sales Hires with Jason Lemki
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- Scaling a Successful SaaS Sales Team w/ 20VC Founder Harry Stebbings and SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin
- 20VC: Wunderlist & Pitch Founder, Christian Reber on His Personal Relationship with Risk, Money, Whether the Sale to Microsoft was a Mistake, What Great Product Designs Means Today & Why Founders Investing External Capital is a Distraction
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 11 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
2018 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 1087 Yeah I'd sell (Live negotiation)
- 20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk and How It Affects Portfolio Construction | Lessons and Advice From Working with Dropbox's Drew Houston | Why Being A Learning Animal Is The Most Important Factor For Success with Ted Wang, Partner @ Cowboy Ventures
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 28 mentions in 4 episodes 7 per episode
- EP 581: DocSend $11M Raised, 2800+ Company Customers, 10,000+ Seats Because Links > Attachments For Docs with CEO Russ Heddleston
- EP 580: Self Funded Vainu SaaS Hits $400K MRR, 1000 Customers To Serve Up Business Data with CEO Pietari Suvanto
- 20VC: Semil Shah on How To Raise An Institutional Venture Fund, Why LPs Mostly Have Reserve Allocation Theory Wrong & Why IPOs and Acquisitions Are Severely Constrained
- EP 582: Simplero SaaS Team of 2 Makes $1M Per Year, Bootstrapped, Totally Happy Helping Users Sell Courses with CEO Calvin Correli
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
18 statements about DocSend, every show
Hudson: Proving fundraise impact was DocSend's key unlock
“So I was a seed stage investor in DocSend, which different, different positioning, but like one of the big unlocks for them was you could actually tell that using DocSend helped you raise money.”
Sam Lessin Gathered 15,000 VC Emails by Gating His Pitch Deck
“Well, that's basically what I did for my future VC. And I have 15,000 VCs email addresses, which, you know, I now send them my weekly thoughts.”
Love: DocSend Had Fewer Than 100 Employees When Acquired by Dropbox
“Even when Dropbox acquired us, we were fewer than a hundred employees.”
Hedleston: 42% of DocSend signups are word-of-mouth and 28% from shared links
“42% of our signups are still word of mouth. About 28% of our signups are from someone viewing a link and then getting interested in coming into the product.”
Hedleston: DocSend's first SMB account executive doubled her quota in month one
“We hired our first SMB AE and in her first month, we're like, we don't think she's going to sell anything. And she sold twice what the quota was supposed to be.”
Russ Hedleston: Prioritize features spreading external awareness to accelerate viral loops
“You can kind reprioritize your product list based on How much it's going to spread awareness about your product outside of the company, which is a great lens for every company to use when thinking about trying to make these viral loops go faster.”
Hedleston: DocSend increased prices and saw conversion rates go up
“We actually just increased the pricing and added a couple of new plans. And we thought the conversion would come down, but we'd make more money. What happened was that conversion went up. And we made way more money.”
Hedleston: DocSend has used zero paid acquisition for its growth
“My two co-founders and I are all engineers and product people, and so we've basically used our product as the marketing engine for the company so far. We haven't done any paid acquisition.”
Heddleston: DocSend made zero revenue in its first year
“We didn't charge any money for the first year, so it was for sure zero.”
Heddleston: One-time fundraising decks cannot sustain a large SaaS business
“You can't build a big business around, around like one time, right? After a few months they successfully raised and they're gone or it didn't work”
Heddleston: A hedge fund tried to acquire DocSend for its data
“We actually did get approached by a hedge fund. About buying the company. And that would have been awful for everyone, but I thought that was flattering in a way, I guess that they were like, we've seen so many of your links that we would like we would like ac…”
Heddleston: DocSend targets outbound at 30+ seat teams for $30k ACV
“If there's screen sharing, if there's Salesforce involved in there, I think it comes out to around like 70 or 80 dollars a user a month. So let's just say roughly a thousand dollars a user a year. We for our outbound only target teams of 30 and above. So that'…”
Heddleston: Selling outbound to 30-person teams takes no longer than 10-person teams
“We found that like selling to a team at 10 is the same amount of time as selling to a team at 30. And if you have outbound, it's expensive. And so, you know, it needs to make sense. If you get up into the hundreds of salespeople, the time it takes to get that …”
Heddleston: DocSend has around 25 employees including six salespeople
“The total team size is around 25 and it is just six salespeople.”
Heddleston: DocSend has over 2,800 paying company customers
“So we actually have over 2800 paying companies right now.”
Heddleston: DocSend raised $10M in equity and $1M in debt
“We've raised capital. We've raised about ten million in venture capital, and then another million in venture debt. So around eleven million in total.”