All right. With that, I believe we're good to go. Thank you everyone for joining us today. This is a day earlier for our 25th annual growth conference, but I appreciate Cynthia's time today. I'm sure most people on the call here know Cynthia Gaylor, DocuSign CFO, but for those that don't, you know, Cynthia, why don't you give a quick background of yourself and maybe the company before we get started?
Yeah, sure. Hi, I'm Cynthia. I'm the CFO at DocuSign. I've been here for about two years. I was on the board for two years prior to that as chair of the Audit Committee and the M&A committee. Prior to that, I was the CFO of another public company, Pivotal Software, that we took public and eventually sold to VMware. Prior to that, I was a executive at Twitter, and I ran strategy and corporate development for a while. Prior to that, I was a partner at Morgan Stanley. I started my career in investment banking focused on mainly software, internet, mobile, e-commerce, advising lots of companies in that space over the years on some of the most strategic initiatives that those companies undertook.
Very embedded in San Francisco and based in sunny, not so sunny San Francisco today. In terms of DocuSign, I guess, you know, it's hard to believe that many of you wouldn't be familiar with us. We're the category leader in eSignature. We have over a billion users and over 1.3 million customers. We really created and defined that category. We have a powerful brand with a very high NPS score. Many of you who I've chatted with in the past, know customers love us because their customers love them for using DocuSign. We have, you know, quite a high ROI product. We have a big untapped market opportunity.
We have about $50 billion plus market opportunity, we're really going after the broader agreement workflows. We talked a lot about that on our Q3 call. We've doubled the size of the company over the last several years. We're still in the early stages. The environment has certainly gotten more competitive from where it was three years ago. Our biggest opportunity is really pen and paper. Customers and companies still moving from more manual ways of doing agreements and doing signature to more automated ways. I think, you know, our goal is to be the leader in the agreement category in the same way we did for eSignature. We're really focused on moving forward and helping define that category, off the strong base that we have.
Great. Yeah, I figured there might only be one person that's not familiar with DocuSign. That's a great overview. Appreciate that. We have lots of topics, but let's start with product. You know, product's my favorite area, or at least tends to be, and it's really the long-term driver of the business. You know, I view, or at least I've always viewed historically eSignature as a relatively straightforward product, but one that has significant more complexity than the average investor appreciates. You know, where does the eSignature market go or evolve to over time? You all have added things like Notary, or a virtual notary solution, but are there any similar products or opportunities to maybe expand, you know, the platform over time?
Yeah, product is super important. I mean, the company was built on innovation, right? Innovating around a category. That's really core to kind of how we'll move forward. We have a new CEO, you may have seen Allan Thygesen join the company about 90 days ago. Really, you know, focusing on innovation around the product is important. Let me give you some examples. Like when you think about DocuSign, many people think about signature. I think more and more people are thinking about the broader agreement workflow as we've built out the platform and the products around it.
When you think about signature alone, it you know, is a very unique product in the sense that the basic eSignature is a basic use case but what we've built around product innovation and what people can do with the product is quite large. Not only is it easy to use, it has a comprehensive application set where we're embedded. We have embedded APIs with over 400 partners, so we're embedded in other workflows. That's a lot of where our innovation is. The ecosystem is quite important to that. Then we're really innovating around kind of the trusted brand, kind of across the board, and so making sure that, you know, identity, things like identity products like Notary can really succeed.
When we think forward, we're really thinking about how do we continue to innovate to really stay ahead of the innovation curve. Many of you may have heard us talk on our Q3 call, you know, and acknowledge that, you know, other companies out there are starting to ship features and functions that we shipped multiple years ago. It, you know, is a good reminder that we can't rest on our laurels. We need to continue to innovate around the product. You heard us talk a lot on the last call as well about self-serve, and self-serve really being a critical component to reduce friction for customers, but also reduce friction internally as we continue to grow and scale. I'm sure Scott will talk about that more.
Absolutely. You know, we both kinda mentioned Notary just 'cause I think that's probably the most tangible touchpoint over the last couple of years that, you know, in terms of new product or platform expansions. How's your success been with that product? Is it, you know, gained any real traction to date? You know, any sort of, you know, color there I think would be helpful.
Yeah. I think, you know, Notary is a very interesting market. It is a regulated market in most places. I think we have a lot of advantages in that market. The core eSignature. The way we think about it is it's really an extension of signature and what we can do in signature versus a standalone product. There would be very few companies that would use our Notary products who weren't already eSignature products. We really look at that as an expansion opportunity. When I think about kind of the, you know, if I were stack ranking the different things across the agreement process, Notary would certainly be in that category. I would say, you know, something like CLM would be a bigger, broader opportunity.
There's only a certain set of customers that are interested in Notary, so we have an innovative product around that. We've done a couple small tuck-in acquisitions around it. Something like CLM, you may have seen the recent Gartner report that put us in the upper right. As a leader in the leaders quadrant. You know, when we think about broader agreement workflows, Notary is certainly part of it, but I would say we have some other things that are probably gonna become a bigger part of it sooner, just given the relevance to the customer.
Got it. You know, while we're talking about the eSignature market, you talked about $50 billion TAM earlier that you all are targeting today. Believe eSignature is roughly half that or $25 billion. Your revenue level isn't even close to, you know, significant $5 billion level on that $25 billion level today. Obviously the numbers suggest the market's not saturated. A question I get from investors all the time is, the company's slowing growth, does that suggest that, I don't know, that the market has reached some sort of saturation point? If it's not, why isn't adoption, you know, occurring further if you have such a low penetration today?
Yeah. I think you summarized it well. You know, when we look across the cohorts of customers, we still have fairly low penetration pretty much across the board. There's lots of opportunity. I think there's a couple dynamics at work. You know, one, I would point to the macro environment. You know, we're certainly being impacted the last several quarters from the macro environment. I think even more so our growth numbers at scale are somewhat skewed because of the peak growth rates we saw during the height of the pandemic.
When we look across the customer base, and we look at the cohorts of customers, the expansion growth is probably one of the biggest drivers of our growth rates, and that's why we've been talking about that a lot with internally, but also with investors and with customers. We know when customers come to the platform, and they use our products, they see high ROI, and they want to do more in that ilk over time. We're also starting off a much higher base with customers. If customers in the beginning of the pandemic bought fairly conservatively, they were new to the platform, we have very much a land and expand model where customers start. Even some of our largest customers have started very small and expanded over time.
The expansions are, you know, moderate over time as well. What we saw during the pandemic was, we doubled the size of the top line in a very short period of time. When I joined the company, we were just over a billion of revenue. You know, we'll finish this year over $2 billion of revenue, right? That's, you know, quite a bit of growth in a very short period of time. What it means is the expansion economics have slowed. We think there's still lots of opportunity within the customer base, but it will take some time for those expansion rates to catch up with the book of business base as customers move forward.
That's why you've seen some things out of us around pricing and packaging, talking to customers about different use cases they can use the products for. You know, many people think about us as signature, but there's lots of different use cases within different verticals. We have a very diversified vertical set, where customers can expand their use of envelopes, which is how, you know, one of our pricing mechanisms as well as receipts. We've run a bunch of pricing and packaging experiments, through bundles, this past quarter, which is really taking basic eSignature and adding premium features and functions to those bundles. What we know is customers who use three or more features, functions, products expand at a higher rate than customers that don't.
We're really focused on reducing friction with customers, making it easier for them to buy and consume our products, and realize that high ROI. 'Cause we also realize customers get somewhat of a halo effect by using DocuSign because it is so easy to use for their customers, you know, that we think the value proposition is there, and the ROI is super clear. In a belt-tightening environment, you know, that will become more and more important.
Got it. You mentioned the CLM market a few minutes ago. I think we all know that you acquired SpringCM several years ago. It really helped spearhead your efforts there. I know it's a smaller part of your business today, but it's got a really large end market. You know, how are you currently thinking about your opportunity within CLM? I think the average investor, you know, would probably suggest that maybe your, you know, opportunities there or kind of the growth there has been a little bit muted compared to the, you know, to the eSignature opportunity that you've seen.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. I think, you know, we did acquire, we acquired a handful of companies prior to the pandemic, and then during the pandemic as kind of add-on to, you know, the broader agreement process. SpringCM was one of them. I think, you know, when the pandemic hit, we had just acquired the company. We were still in the process of integrating it. I think what you saw was customers had an urgent need for signature, you know, particularly customers who maybe hadn't used signature or were using signature plus still doing a lot of manual. They didn't necessarily have appetite to talk about broader, you know, broader agreements or what they could do with a product like CLM.
That really led to the growth and the acceleration of our top line with signature predominantly, which also means that CLM, as a percentage of the business, even though it was doing okay, was not growing. You know, it's gonna take a lot longer when you have a really fast-growing thing that's really big, it's gonna mute, you know, a fast-growing thing that's really small. The other thing I would say is, as we came out of the pandemic, I think, you know, the last three or four quarters, you know, we have highlighted CLM as a bright spot, you know, in the business, but it's still a pretty small percentage of the revenue.
You know, my hope is that, you know, as we look to the future and we're talking about broader agreements, we're looking at all the pieces of the agreement process, which, you know, CLM is certainly one of them, but we're also able to articulate, you know, how different pieces are doing, which may not be, you know, percent of revenue, but it may be, you know, a different way of describing agreement workflows, and measuring, you know, better measuring our success there. I think it's still pretty early. CLM is doing well. It's certainly been a bright spot. Customers who use signature, you know, are eager to find high ROI products and expand with us. You know, but it's still early days, it's still pretty small. It's a big market opportunity.
Similar to signature, it's, you know, a big untapped market opportunity. Even though there's competitors in the space, there's lots of untapped TAM. It's more a greenfield 'cause we're, you know, that is a category on its own that's still digitizing or digital transforming, you know, within companies. It does, at the customer level, require change management and processes. We even see that for ourselves internally.
Got it. I guess lastly on product, you mentioned Allan just starting with the company a short time ago. How is he shaping, you know, the product platform today? I know it's early in his tenure with the company, you know, how should we expect the product side of the business maybe evolve under his view?
I think, you know, Allan's been now, in seat, you know, 90-ish days, 90+ days. you know, has really been focused with customers, partners, and employees, you know, on kind of helping define our key priorities, understanding the points of pain, and then really helping drive the business forward. That's really where his primary focus has been. I think when we think about product and you think about his priorities, innovation is at the top of that list. It also touches some of the go-to-market pieces. I know we're talking about product, but when I think about things like self-serve, you know, that is a product, very important product-led growth type of motion.
It also will bring, you know, hopefully over time, top-line growth, you know, in our go-to-market as well as make the business more efficient. I think there's kind of, on pieces like that, you know, particularly given his background and his tenure at Google, I think he really understands kind of that long tail of the customer base and what's required from a product set, but also from a go-to-market, to really drive that type of business. I think that's a great partnership with our new sales leader who really comes from, you know, a big enterprise background, right? Our enterprise motion is still, you know, what I would say, immature. Like, even though we have enterprise customers, I think how we go after the enterprise is not mature, and I think there's lots of opportunity there as well.
Got it. Sticking with the leadership change, I guess. What else should investors expect from Allan's appointment into the CEO spot? You know, any change in strategy versus how Dan viewed the overall opportunity, or is there maybe something more so that we should all look for?
I think, you know, I think on the Q3 call, Allan, you know, articulated his key priorities, you know, and at that point he was, I think, 70 days in the seat. It is around innovation and go-to-market. If you were to parse those, you know, more finely, it would be things like the self-serve motion, pieces around customer success and make sure that we're helping drive customer success, reducing friction for customers. International remains a very big opportunity for us. In some ways every customer can be a digital customer. About 13% of our revenue comes from the digital channel.
You know, I think he will bring, as I mentioned earlier, kind of a new lens to how we think about digital and self-serve, not just for small customers, but also kind of for our land and expand motion and how can even direct customers self-serve in some areas of their business. You know, I would just follow up that list with partners. Our partner ecosystem is very important. Thinking about how do we expand that and leverage that both from a product and a go-to-market perspective. Lastly would be reducing friction in operations. He talked about that a bunch, we did on the Q3 call, which is both reducing friction for customers, but also just internally.
You know, as the business scale, there's just required investments as we've talked about on the last several calls, you know, across our systems and processes. Those are the handful of priorities that I think we're really driving towards. As we go through our annual planning process, really making sure that we have our people and our investments lined up against those pieces.
Talk about people and investments. Now that Allan walked into a hefty 9% reduction of force effectively on his first day. You know, I always look at, you know, changes of staffing levels like that can be important for a variety of reasons, but they're tough, mainly because they can alter the culture of a company. Culture is something I tend to be really focused on within software companies because growth companies need a culture to sustain that growth. It's something that I've seen a lot. Can you talk about the current culture, you know, within the company and maybe what Allan's message has been on this topic?
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that, Scott. I think, you know, I mean, doing restructurings are always difficult. DocuSign has never been through one before, but I'm sure you all, you know, are following the press on, you know, many of our software peers, but also kind of the broader technology market and broader corporate market. You know, unfortunately, you know, the macro environment right now, a lot of companies are going through the same thing. You know, I think for us, with the changes in management, you know, that's probably, you know, a bigger factor than, you know, something like the restructuring, even though those are difficult.
I think really, you know, working with employees, and that's why, you know, one of Allan's big priorities has been spending a lot of time with customers and employees. We have seen and we talked about on the Q3 call, attrition has stabilized, you know, across the employee base. You know, I think part of that is having some of the executives in seat now for a couple of quarters, plus, you know, having a permanent CEO named and now off and running and, you know, defining priorities, not just culture, but also strategy and mission of the company. You know, so that provides a lot of, you know, good, call it tea leave reading. You know, and I guess, you know, philosophically on culture, you know, I couldn't agree with you more.
You know, people come to work, because they, you know, wanna make a difference, but they also, you know, want to work in a culture that's conducive to their, you know, their core beliefs and how they want to, you know, move forward. Culture is up to every employee at a company, and cultures evolve over time. I would say, you know, we're probably evolving just with all of the new people on board. I'd also say, you know, at the peak of the pandemic, we were evolving because we were adding so many people. I think, again, culture is a living, breathing type of thing.
I think, you know, the management team, as well as the employee base, is really rallying around kind of the key priorities and driving the business forward. I think that, you know, will help define, the culture of the company, you know, in the future.
Okay. I did fail to mention one thing before we got started. We will be taking Q&A from the audience at the end here. My questions go for roughly 10 more minutes, and then that'll leave 10 to 15 minutes for audience Q&A. If you'd like to ask a question, feel free to enter it into the messaging feature within the Zoom here, or feel free to email me myself at sberg@needhamco.com. We already have several questions in there, so I do look forward to taking those in a minute at least. Let's talk about financials a little bit. We have a CFO on the call. We have to talk financials at least once or twice on here.
I guess as you look at the third quarter results, Cynthia, billings accelerated for the first time in five quarters. You called out early renewals as benefiting, you know, how you blew away the guidance number. I really viewed the quarter, it was really more about the company regaining its ability to quote-unquote call the quarter. It's kinda the second quarter in a row where you've been able to outperform your billings guidance. Is that a correct view in your mind, or is there maybe something more to it than that?
Yeah. I think we think about it a little bit differently. You know, billings is one of our metrics. It's certainly an important metric. You know, I think we've been talking for many quarters now about our visibility into the business is not where we would like it to be. I think that is still a true statement. I think when we look at the dynamics around billings for Q3, specifically, we did talk about early renewals. I wouldn't say we blew away the guidance. I think there was a balancing between Q3 renewals and billings and Q4 renewals and billings. That's why, you know, the Q4 guide looks like it does.
We kinda wind up in a very similar spot independent, you know, it's really around the timing of deals and when they came in. That being said, there are customers, you know, who were at or near their capacity, and so they renewed early, right? We are seeing, you know, some dynamic there, but I wouldn't extrapolate that into the, you know, into the future. You know, I think the outlook we provided stands on its own. I'd also just, Scott, say, you know, we've the last four quarters, we've made the billing guide, you know, the Q+1 out.
It's really been, you know, more a dynamic of the quarters further out as the business has changed, as the leadership has changed, as, you know, some of the customer dynamics and macro have changed. We've had, you know, decent visibility on the Q+1 one for billings. We've had some trouble, you know, earlier this year, you know, on the further out, outlook.
Okay. You talked about some of the, some of the renewals there, which brings us to my next question around Net Revenue Retention. It's been falling. You all have talked about on the last quarter call, and you expect it to fall a little bit further. Falling Net Revenue Retention can happen, of course, for two reasons. You know, customers may be full on capacity and they just don't need to expand in the short term, or customers may have overbought and now downsell might occur. How do we think about kind of the balance between those two, you know, portions on the teeter-totter that might be driving the deceleration Net Revenue Retention?
Yeah. Yeah. You know, we talked about this a bunch on the call, but also it's one of the key questions that we do get from investors. You know, we don't guide to Dollar Net Retention, but we do try to give, you know, color on it each quarter as well as, you know, what we expect for the one quarter out. We did say, you know, we expect that the trend line, the downward trend line would continue in that metric into Q4.
When we kind of unpack it goes back to, you know, the beginning part of this meeting where we were really talking about those expansion rates and the dynamics we're seeing in the cohorts of customers and kind of the flattening of the expansion rates. In Dollar Net Retention, there is embedded churn. But if you were to point to one thing or the top thing driving that dynamic, it's probably the rate of expansion. Overall, customers are still expanding. They're just expanding at a slower rate. And that doesn't mean we don't have churn, but it means that that's the bigger driver of the trend line right now.
No, that's a great viewpoint because obviously it talks about, or highlights, you know, the value your customers are getting from the product and versus, having to trend down because of the change in business.
Yeah. I, and I also think it points to, Scott, that the when you think about the customers and what we were talking about earlier on penetration rates, you know, and how, you know, we're under-penetrated in some pockets or there's still lots of opportunity, untapped opportunity within the install base. It also, you know, points to that over time, there are things in our control to further expand within the customers ’cause they're not fully penetrated. I think, you know, that's a dynamic when we look at those different cohorts, it feels like something very much between product innovation and go to market, you know, we can do, we can do more around.
Great. I guess it would not be a good call right now if we didn't talk about the macro at least a little bit given what's going on. You know, can you remind us how the macro is impacting the business? You know, is this just typical lengthening of sales cycles that, you know, many of the software vendors are seeing out there, or is there another dynamic that might be at play in, I don't know whether it's your industry or product set?
Yeah. I mean, we're not immune to the macro environment similar to, you know, our software peers. You know, I think given our products have ROI, you know, there's still demand, but it's probably muted demand in the current environment, and we talked about that some on the Q3 call. You know, we're focused on the things in our control.
you know, there's certainly verticals, you know, that are more impacted right now by macro similar to at the peak of the pandemic, there were certain verticals, you know, financials, mortgage is maybe, you know, a very obvious one, where, you know, when interest rates were very low, customers who had a lot of exposure to mortgage, you know, were expanding at very high rates 'cause they were doing a lot more mortgages. Now in the current environment where interest rates are higher, there's maybe not as much mortgages. If the customer is a pure mortgage provider, you know, that would be an example of a, you know, a vertical that is being impacted more by the macro.
Again, we have a pretty diversified vertical base and, you know, mortgage would hit financial vertical overall, but then even within pockets of financial, you know, we do see some really promising expansions within those verticals for other use cases. So customers who have diversified use cases themselves may be moving their vertical usage of our product to other areas of their business, right? So that, you know, is interesting within itself. I think, you know, we do have customers impacted by macro. We will be impacted by macro. The outlook we gave for fiscal 2024 doesn't assume improvement in the macro or deterioration. It's kind of, you know, what we're seeing now is what we would expect to continue into next year.
My last questions were actually on your initial, I wouldn't call it guidance, but view on fiscal 2024. Can you talk about what drives, I guess, the comfort or visibility into the, you know, growth level that you know, just talked about in game on the third quarter call there? You talked about earlier on the out quarters, you know, maybe a little less visibility earlier in the year, but you seem to have a fair amount of visibility at this point or at least a fair amount of comfort in terms of the initial guidance you're giving for next year.
Yeah. I would just say, like, look, we were really pleased to be able to give an outlook we thought in the current environment, you know, particularly, with, you know, what's going on in the macro, as well as, you know, the additions to our management team. It was important to give at least an initial outlook. I'd caution you, it's not a guide, right? You know, hopefully, when we get to that point next year, we'll be in a position to be more specific. We thought it was important to, you know, put out there what we're currently seeing. You know, we are in the midst of our fiscal 2024 planning cycle, you know, that will come together. Allan's in his role, as I said, about 90 days.
You know, really focusing on where our priorities are for next year, where we're gonna put, more or less investment against those priorities. You know, I think, in general, I think putting out the outlook was probably more of, you know, we wanted to be, clear on what we're seeing. You know, I think that's what it represents versus more or less visibility than what I was talking about earlier.
Last question for me, and then we will take audience Q&A. We've got several come in. It's on the operating margin, kind of, I guess, initial view that you gave on third quarter call. You talked about operating margins will likely be on the lower end of your kind of long-term 20%-25% guidance range. I guess with the, you know, changing workforce and the 9% reduction in a, you know, single-digit revenue growth rate, why would we not see operating margins short trend maybe towards the higher end of that? Because your investment levels are likely, you know, to be, I guess, a little bit lower, knowing that the, you know, growth, at least in the near term, isn't as hyper as what you'd seen previously.
Yeah, for sure. I think the, you know, the restructuring in some way gives us room to invest in the, you know, in the key priorities. Given where we are in the market and our leading market position, you know, I know Allan and our team feel strongly that we need to invest in the right ways, but we wanna do so in a disciplined way. I think there are, you know, arguments for, you know, higher margin or lower margin. We think, you know, the lower end of that range for next year is reasonable. We wanted to make it clear that we were committed to the lower end of the target range that we had communicated at the time of the IPO, you know, before I was even on the board.
You know, we're committed to profitable growth at scale. You know, I think we also have to prioritize some of the growth areas, given the greenfield space in our market and our leading position. As we go across, you know, after the broader agreement workflows, I think we need to make sure that we're making the right investments in order to be the category leader there as well.
All right. Well, with that, let's take some live Q&A here. First question is, on the self-service motion. What is the opportunity for cost savings by moving SMB to self-serve?
I think the self-serve is not solely about kind of cost savings. You know, as I, as I touched on earlier, I think there's a multifaceted opportunity. One is around product innovation and make sure we're innovating around the product so that all customers across direct and digital can self-serve doing more things. We also think it's a good landing spot for international to further grow international, but it does require product investment, which is a key focus area. We also think it can drive top line growth kind of across the business if more customers can self-serve across more different activities. Third, I do think it is a, you know, it can provide some operating leverage over time. I wouldn't anticipate that's kind of an immediate piece because we do have some product things we need to do before we would necessarily see that leverage in the business model.
Next question is around your Net Revenue Retention. You talked about seeing early renewals with many customers at capacity. If so, why is Dollar Net Retention coming down then?
Yeah. When customers are at capacity, and their contract is coming up for renewal, they could be at capacity and doing a flat renewal. They could be at capacity and doing a slightly down renewal or an up renewal, right? They could be expanding, they could be contracting, they could be flat. Just because they're at capacity doesn't necessarily mean they're expanding or contracting. I think also the dynamic we talked about the early renewals, we saw a slight uplift in the Q+1 type of renewals, which we think also speaks to the macro environment. Customers may not be renewing as many quarters out, but also our field is developing better hygiene around how we are looking at the renewal base and the renewals coming due.
If the field is going through their checklist and saying, "Hey, this customer's due in two weeks, two weeks after the quarter closed. Look, they're like, they're just approaching capacity. Let's talk to them now and talk to them about renewing a couple weeks early. Maybe we're selling them additional products. We're expanding them. Maybe, you know, maybe they're gonna try out the new pricing and packaging." There's all different kind of dials in that, in that discussion. I think it points to two things. One, I think the go-to-market piece and just some of the enablement initiatives we've been talking about and our team doing better. I also, on the flip side, though, would say it points a little bit to the macro climate.
Some of our other peer companies have seen a similar dynamic in kind of that Q+1 early renewal, which, again, we're pleased to be able to take those deals off the table and bring them into Q3. That Dollar Net Retention, again, it's around that expansion rate, over a bigger, a bigger book of business, and so it takes more expansion dollars to move the Dollar Net Retention, than it did, you know, two years ago when we were a much smaller company.
Okay. Next couple questions are on CLM. The first question is, if you're number two in the market, who's number one? With that vendor, where are you lacking or behind in terms of product and go-to-market? I don't think we have to name who number one is. They're actually presenting at our conference here, if anyone is not familiar with them. You know, certainly I can take that one later. From a feature functionality or go-to-market, why are they ahead or what gaps do you need to fill?
Yeah. I'm not sure, like, what measure, you know, the number one or number two is. Like, I think we would say we are the leader in the market. Gartner, I think the, you know, folks can look at, you know, what they, what they published. You know, I think everybody is called a leader in the market, so I would maybe debate, you know, number one, number two. You know, I don't wanna get into that debate. I think we would say, like, we're the leader in the market, and we're not just in CLM. We're kind of across broader agreements.
We have a really big install base where we think we can go in and define the category there, of which CLM is a big piece of that, or a core component, I should say. Again, I think different people are attacking different slices of the market. We don't think there's, you know, winner takes all in that market. Similar to Signature, there's not a winner take all. We think others can succeed. What we're doing is looking ahead and how are we gonna innovate around broader agreement workflows and be the category leader across that broader initiative.
Okay. On the CLM adoption, how would you characterize the customer profile of someone who adopts the CLM offering, maybe by head count or vertical, et cetera? Is every single DocuSign customer addressable for CLM?
I'll take the second one first. The answer is no, I don't think every single DocuSign customer is addressable for CLM. I think the given it's a, it's a fairly nascent market, and again, I talked about change management, you know, within the customer base in terms of how do you think about agreements, how do you think about contracts, how do you think about the process and the automation around them? It does require change management. As I said, you know, we're going through that journey internally ourselves. I would say, you know, every customer is not a CLM customer.
I would say the profile of customer who's primed to be a CLM customer is a customer who is a signature customer, and they are likely in, you know, certain, you know, certain areas of verticals. Financials is a good example, manufacturing would be a good example, healthcare, life sciences could be another example. Technology sector would be some examples. Not the only examples, but just some that are kind of top of mind, who have used signature, who have seen the ROI and now want to expand what they're doing with DocuSign in that same high ROI way. Those would be some of the pieces. I would say, you know, likely it's probably more in kind of what we call our mid-market majors and enterprise type customers than our VSMB or SMB type of customers.
That doesn't mean some of them don't use the products. There's different features and functions even within those products, that folks, customers find value. I would say that would probably be the, how I would articulate that.
Okay. Last question, pardon me, at least on CLM at the moment, is, how much does the average customer's ACV increase when they adopt CLM?
Yeah. Similar to eSignature, it's a land and expand model. Customers tend to start small and then expand over time. There's also more customer success required around CLM. While we don't disclose kind of the deal sizes, you know, what I would say is when we're thinking about things like dollar net retention, and we're talking about the expansion rates, you know, adding products like CLM can expand, you know, expands that book of business. We are very focused on making sure that customers have exposure to these other products, to help with those expansion rates.
Okay. Next question is on the early renewals. Can you provide some color into the magnitude of the early renewals for Q3?
Yeah. I mean, we have early renewals. We have some level of early renewals in every quarter. You know, I would say, you know, the dynamic. We've talked about it, you know. I remember my first couple quarters here as the CFO during the peak of the pandemic, we had early renewals that were a different dynamic. It was customers who had bought conservatively and then expanded way before their contract expired because they needed more. The expansion rates, you know, were quite high, and that was reflected in both our revenue growth, our billings growth, and our Dollar Net Retention. I think what we're seeing now in early renewals. Again, we always have, you know, we always have a certain level of early renewals.
In Q3, it was that Q+1 dynamic. I think we're looking at that. Remember, a Q4 has more renewals just given the cycle of contracts. Q4 tends to be a stronger quarter in software. You know, we wouldn't expect that dynamic to continue into next year into Q1, or into Q4, just because there's not the same base of renewals coming due in those quarters.
I like the next question here, just 'cause I think just the way it's worded a little bit. How can investors know, aside from when you tell us on a conference call, when the COVID hangover effects have ended? What is the, you know, management team at the company looking at to help better understand where this is at?
I think the on COVID, I mean, I know, you know, some pockets of investors talk about the COVID hangover. I think, you know, we had acceleration in our business due to COVID, and we're kinda coming off of that. There's these dynamics around, you know, we grew our book of business, we grew our customer set very quickly. I think that, you know, is a testament to what the market opportunity is. It's still a really big market where, you know, believe it or not, a lot of companies don't use a electronic signature product. They don't use DocuSign. We only have 1.3 million customers. There's tens of millions of companies around the world.
I think, you know, we think about it less as like the COVID hangover effect. We think it more about how do we continue to expand within our install base? How do we continue to land, which we've been, you know, pleased with our lands on net new customers and make customers successful so that they're expanding across the innovation that we're delivering, you know, in the products and the features and functions as we've been talking about.
Well, with that, we are up against the clock. Cynthia, I wanted to thank you so much for joining us, and everyone on the call, thank you so much for joining us. If there's any other follow-up questions, feel free to reach out to me directly or to Cynthia in the IR team at DocuSign. Thank you so much, everyone.
Terrific. Thank you. Thanks for having us.