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In another bad sign for DocuSign, four top executives are gone

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Docusign CEO Keith Krach
Docusign CEO Keith Krach  Docusign

Four top level executives have suddenly left DocuSign: the company’s chief operating officer, chief human resources officer, chief product officer and chief growth officer, Geekwire's Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper report.

This comes after the odd experience DocuSign had with its CEO. The company had lined up a replacement for CEO Keith Krach, but the replacement backed out in March, accepting an offer at another company, DocuSign said earlier this year.

Krach announced his resignation in October, although he agreed to stay on until a new CEO was found, and agreed to stay as chairman for three years. Krach joined DocuSign as the chairman in 2010 and took over as CEO in 2012.

DocuSign has not yet formally announced the resignation of the four execs, but their names have been removed from the company's leadership page and at least one of them, COO Gordon Payne, has confirmed on LinkedIn that he left DocuSign in May.

The other executives no longer on the leadership page are HR officer Peter Navin, growth officer Mike Dinsdale and top product officer Matt Malden.

DocuSign, which allows people to sign documents electronically, raised almost $400 million of its total $528 million VC funding, most of it under Krach’s watch. It was valued at $3 billion, although some of its investors, including Fidelity Investments has since written down the valuation of its stake in the company, indicating that the investor doesnt' think its worth as much now as it once was. Many highly valued startups are experiencing the same thing now. 

DocuSign was widely expected to be gearing up for an IPO, but these management changes may be a sign that the company is focused on other, more basic aspects of its operations.

DocuSign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Julie Bort was Business Insider's Editor at Large for the Tech team. She loves investigating stories and shedding light on the tech industry's most amazing people.Here's a small sample of some of Julie's work.Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'Sex, tequila, and a tiger: Employees inside Adam Neumann's WeWork talk about the nonstop party to attain a $100 billion dream and the messy reality that tanked itInsiders say WeWork's IT is a patchwork of cheap devices and Band-Aid fixes that will take millions to fixWeWork's toxic phone booths were created in-house by its Powered by We business70-hour weeks and 'WTF' emails: 42 employees reveal the frenzy of working at Tesla under the 'cult' of Elon MuskElon Musk works so many hours at Tesla, employees are constantly finding him asleep under tables and desksHow this woman went from a Pizza Hut employee to a founder of a $4 billion startupAn Oracle insider explains how some salespeople gamed the system to sell more cloudTHE TAKEDOWN OF TRAVIS KALANICK: The untold story of Uber's infighting, backstabbing, and multimillion-dollar exit packagesMicrosoft is in talks to buy GitHub, a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billionThe alarming inside story of a failed Google acquisition, and an employee who was hospitalizedInside Facebook's plan to eat another $350 billion IT marketHow a registered sex offender wound up living in an Airbnb hosting unsuspecting guestsA controversial ex-banker is the person who really runs Twitter — and he's gambling the company's future on one risky betSecret passages and skipped meals: Oracle's CEO gave us a rare peek at what it really takes to run a $37 billion companyHP told some employees to choose between becoming contractors with no benefits or being fired without severance'I felt like we were being extorted': Customer says Oracle tried to strong-arm him into a cloud saleHow the queen of Silicon Valley is helping Google go after Amazon's most profitable businessAirbnb host: A guest is squatting in my condo and I can't get him to leaveLIES, BOOZE, AND BILLIONS: How one of the fastest-growing startups in Silicon Valley history raised $580 million then spiraled out of controlGitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart — and we have the full inside storyWhen she's not writing for Business Insider, Julie can usually be found on the trails, on my mountain bike, or on my skis, if you know where to look.