Fax Electronic signature Form Now

What is Digital Signature? And Benefits of Digital Signature CertificatesA digital signature is basically a way to ensure that an electronic document (e-mail, spreadsheet, text file, etc.) is authentic. Authentic means that you know who created the document and you know that it has not been altered in any way since that person created it.Digital signatures rely on certain types of encryption to ensure authentication. Encryption is the process of taking all the data that one computer is sending to another and encoding it into a form that only the other computer will be able to decode. Authen...

It has evolved! How many homes have you purchased in the last ten years? If it’s more than one, you should have had a different experience.The amount of data that is available to consumers online is overwhelming to most. Some of it is bogus and much of it needs a professional to translate what it really means but it has definitely changed the experience. If nothing else, it’s easier to know when you have a crappy REALTOR.We can now do more for you and we can do it digitally. You no longer have to slug around looking at homes that have no chance of meeting your needs or rush to the real estate office to sign documents, make deposits and get your offer in fast. Almost everything can be done with a digital signatures now, even closings!More and more properties are being sold without the buyer actually stepping onto the property. With better photography and video and inspectors that work digitally, all of your due diligence can be done from your couch.Mortgage lending has also changed drastically though not all of that is to the immediate benefit of the consumer. The federal guidelines are not fun but most of them protect you in the long run.As late as 2000, many states were completely ‘buyer beware’ with no disclosures required of the seller. Now, all states have at least a minimum of required disclosures by law.So I would say that there have been lots of changes and evolution is strong in the real estate industry.

Q: How did Nasa go to the moon during first Apollo mission so early when even good communication and latest rocket spaceship technology were not available before 1980?Let me show you something:This is a facsimile machine (a fax machine) of roughly the sort my father used in his job with the Strategic Air Command during the 1960’s. It was an expensive, cumbersome piece of junk, and when introduced in the late 1940s, it required dedicated wiring between stations and had a range limited to 9 miles.Still, Western Union and the US government were all over it. It was a damn sight better than the system used in France starting in the 1840s which burned crude copies into paper using a heated, mechanically timed stylus, and until post-space program advances in computer technology made cheap consumer fax machines ubiquitous in the 1980s (and then obsolete a few years later) it was THE way to transmit orders, signatures, and other critical documents when time didn’t allow for a courier.This is how technology advances most of the time; a crude proof of concept opens the door, is picked up by deep-pockets patrons, and eventually helps drive the very innovations that lead to later, more practical versions of itself.A few examples:The Wright Brother’s Aeroplane was arguably better at killing people than transporting them, but it spawned the era of powered flight.Submersible boats have been built for military purposes at least since the American Revolution, even though until the dawn of the 20th century, the only power source available to them was human muscle. They weren’t practical enough to have much military significance, until advances in battery and internal combustion made the U-boats and other subs of the World Wars possible. Even these were absurdly uneconomical death traps, but they did the job and paved the way to today’s true submarines (both nuclear powered and otherwise).From the 1940’s, the military used radio positioning gear accurate to within a few yards—but which required troupes to carry, operate, and maintain about twenty heavy or unwieldy pieces of equipment in order to interface with a ground network of radio stations. This remained state-of-the-art for half a century until the first GPS satellite network went live.In the early days of electronic computing, data was stored using regenerative working memory cells (dynamic RAM) in which the data was carried in a sound waves propagating through a glass tube full of mercury. This was hugely expensive and impractical, but much, much faster than the spinning drums available at the time, and much more reliable than tube-based flip-flops. This early memory (and a number of equally bizarre alternatives) held sway until the advent of magnetic core memory, which was insanely complex given the hands-on fabrication methods of the day, but was even faster and more reliable, and so became near universal for about 20 years, until transistor-based memory build into integrated circuits finally dislodged it.Before spy satellites and planes were available, the US spied on Soviet territory by means of high altitude, unmanned balloons, an idea it got form a hair-brained Japanese scheme to bomb our mainland during WWII. The reconnaissance balloons had a very low success rate, but were considered invaluable to the government — half a century before Google Earth.This balloon program funded development of high quality surveillance cameras and film canister in-air retrieval techniques which were used by the first generation of US Spy satellites—ten years before the technology to build electronic cameras of any quality existed.Film captured from one of these balloons was carried to the moon by Luna 3, the USSR’s first lunar orbital probe, which used it to photograph the far side of the moon. To get the image back to Earth, the film was automatically developed in space, then scanned and sent back electronically—a half century before the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.I could go on at length. The point is, governments have the resources to make things work when they don’t—and when anyone with any money sense would give up.We often see questions to the effect “why has no one returned to the moon since the Apollo Program?” The answer is, because we got there by building everything needed, from scratch, under contract, at huge expense.In many ways, the Saturn V was the logical descendant of the German V2 (which was another hugely impractical government program that opened doors), but in many ways, it was the very bleeding edge. So much so, at one point, Boeing enlisted surf board makers to help them understand the composite materials needed to build tank bulkheads.I have said before that the moon landing may be the greatest of all human achievements specifically because we got so little from it of immediate, concrete value. It was, in a real sense, the Great Pyramid of modern times.But like the pyramids, it required an unsustainable investment of time, blood, and treasure. The pause and backtracking into low Earth orbit that followed was a tacit acknowledgement that in a real sense, we had gone too far too fast.Only now had our technology started to catch up with our dreams. Only now can multiple private enterprises rival governments and government monopolies for space attainment and start to consider real, meaningful advances beyond the “one giant leap for mankind.”It may be centuries yet before we span the equivalent of the gulf between the pyramids and the Manhattan skyline, between Roman Baths and modern central heating, between the aquaducts and Hoover Dam, but we are now taking the first steps toward the privatization and commercialization of space. We are witnessing an era that will have as much history impact as the great age of European exploration, but without the smallpox and the genocide.In this respect at least, it’s a fine time to be alive.If you like science, you might like my free award-winning scifi sampler.

Email is absolutely awesome. I LOVE email.We constantly hear people complaining that email is terrible. People keep saying that we need to invent something new.Email is the best means of communication that ever existed. And while email can be massively improved, it will remain the best communication means for many, many years.Asynchronous communication is really, really importantEmail is beautiful because it is asynchronous. When you get an email, it is not assumed you will respond that second. You can take a day, think about the message, and respond thoughtfully. Sometimes it is just used to convey information and you do not need to respond at all.Synchronous written communication (like SMS, chat, etc.) have their place and can be really important when real-time is a priority … but most things do not need to be real time.Email is openAnyone using any system can email anyone else. You use Google Apps and I use Microsoft Exchange? We can still communicate. The soldier using Military email can communicate with her grandmother using AOL.You can take your history with you. You can forward your messages to a new system. Don’t like using Gmail? No problem, you can forward your old gmail address email to the new one you like.Messages go through a common protocol.Most of the “new” cool systems are closed. They are not portable. They lock you in. They don’t actually have your best interest at heart.Email has a long history that you can searchThe older you are, the more useful this is. You can figure out when you met that cool person twelve years ago. You can read old communications. You can easily search. And, because it is open, you can take your history with you (though admittedly this is more difficult than it needs to be).Many “new” modes of communication are just emailSMS: synchronous email with threads. (Gmail is asynchronous email with threads)Facebook messaging: email with nice graphics.Slack: email that only works for internal communication.WeChat: synchronous email for people that live in China.Is email perfect? Of course notEmail still could be much better. Even gmail can sometimes be really, really slow. Searches can be awkward. Many great advances and email apps just slow things down or cause bugs.And, of course, the company-wide reply-all is a crazy time suck for everyone.And many people send too many emails. And many people write emails that are WAY too long. And sometimes people write emails when a quick phone or in-person meeting would be better.Email can also break down with big groups trying collaborate together.Email also needs to be much more secure.Like all good things, email can be abused.Email is alive, well, and flourishingYes, there are some high school students that don’t use email … but they use something that is just amore synchronous version of email. In fact, most ppl communicate most with either email or something that looks very much like email. Email makes the world go round. It is the easiest way to communicate with most people. It is the best way to invite someone to a function. It is the common communication language of our era. And like other common communication languages of our era (like the QWERTY keyboard and English), there are structural problems that we wish we could change. But I say, LONG LIVE EMAIL!

I've been at signNow since the very beginning of Acrobat. I think there were several factors that lead to the success of PDF. First, we published the specification, that allowed governments to adopt it knowing that companies other than signNow would be able to create and read the file format long into the future, later PDF was adopted by the ISO which solidified it's future as an open standard.Next was our ability to respond reasonably quickly to market demands. The earliest versions couldn't be used for commercial printing but the market forced us to add that functionality and now we have standards like PDF/X. Enterprises recognized how great PDF files would be if it could have fillable fields and behave like a paper form. We added digital signatures so that electronic approvals could happen as well as commenting tools. These are just a few examples.Also, we kept Acrobat around long enough for the market to catch up. It took a long time for people to give up their fax machines and use of scanned TIFF files but eventually PDF became accepted as THE way to share final form documents. With the emergence of slate devices, the paper metaphor used by PDF along with it's support for multi-media makes it an ideal format for these devices.Finally - Our history with PostScript helped us to understand what "precision" means and how important it is to the customers who require it. When you promise document fidelity, anything less than 100% is unacceptable. We understood that long before we even started thinking about the PDF specification. It's in signNow's DNA. I have the original Acrobat 1.0 help file, in PDF of course, and it displays perfectly in Acrobat X more than 15 years and several industry revolutions later. Try that with an old .doc file.

As a startup founder of three years myself, I can relate to how legal housekeeping can be messy. Once a year, I have our own lawyers go through and do an audit of all of our legal paperwork (which costs a couple thousand dollars to be extremely thorough, but it’s worth it). Luckily, there are now many ways to easily manage and track all of your legal, financial, and HR documents via third-party sites that specialize in these management proceedings. I wrote a blog post about this awhile back titled “5 Ways to Save Time Dealing With Documents” which highlights certain sites that can be very beneficial depending on what paperwork you’d like to track or manage. They are as follows:1. GroupDocsGroupDocs is a new, comprehensive online service for document creation and management. It has multiple features, including a viewer for reading documents in your browser, an electronic signature service, an online document converter, a document assembly service, a feature for comparing different versions of a document, and an annotation feature. An individual plan is $10 per month for limited storage and 500 documents, while a group plan for up to 9 people is $19 per user per month. Based on the number of features and pricing, GroupDoc is a good-value purchase for a small business. As you’ll see below, GroupDocs can be cheaper than a service that offers only one such feature.2. signNowWhen you’re closing a deal and need to get documents signed, the last thing you need is a slow turnaround due to fax machine problems or the postal service. The solution is to use an electronic signature service such as signNow, which is one of the most popular e-signature companies in the world. This service allows you to email your documents to the person whose signature you need. Next, the recipient undergoes a simply e-signing process, and then signNow alerts you when the process is completed. Finally, signNow electronically stores the documents, which are accessible at any time. As a result, you can easily track the progress of the signature process and create an audit trail of your documents. The “Professional” plan is recommended for sole proprietors and freelancers, and costs $180 per year ($15 per month) for up to 50 requested signatures per month. The “Workgroup” plan is geared towards teams and businesses, and it costs $240 per user per year ($20 per month per user), for unlimited requested signatures.3. signNowsignNow is another e-signature service. Similar to signNow, signNow allows you to upload a PDF file, MS Word file or web application document. Next, you can edit the document, such as by adding initials boxes or tabs, and then email them out for signatures. Once recipients e-sign the document, signNow notifies you and archives the document. signNow offers low rates for these services: a 1-person annual plan with unlimited document sending costs $11 per month. An annual plan for 10 senders with unlimited document sending costs only $39 per month.4. ExariExari is a document assembly and contract management service that assists in automating high-volume business documents, such as sales agreements or NDAs. First, the document assembly service allows authors to create automated document templates. No technical knowledge is required; most authors are business analysts and lawyers. Authors have a variety of options for customizing documents, such as fill-in-the-blank fields, optional clauses, and dynamic updating of topic headings. They also can add questions that the end user must answer. Once you send out the document, the user answers the questionnaire, and Exari uses that data to customize the document. Next, the contract management feature allows you to store and track both the templates and the signed documents. Pricing is based on the size and scope of your planned implementation, so visit their website for more information.5. FillanyPDFIt’s a hassle having to print out PDF forms in order to complete them. Fortunately, FillanyPDF is a service that allows you to edit, fill out and send any PDFs, while entirely online. This “Fill & Sign” plan costs $5 per month, or $50 per year. If you subscribe to the “Professional” plan, you can also create fillable PDFs using your own documents. With this service, any PDF, JPG or GIF file becomes fillable when you upload it to the site. You can modify a form using white-out, redaction and drawing tools. Then, you can email a link to your users, who can fill out and e-sign your form on the website. FillanyPDF also allows you to track who filled out your forms, and no downloads are necessary to access these services.  The “Professional” plan costs $49 per month, or $490 per year.Switching firms can be a hassle. As a former startup attorney, I have a bit of advice about finding the right attorney for your business: it’s best to focus on the specific attorney you’ll be working with. He or she should have a solid understanding of the ins and outs of your business industry, a deep knowledge of the legal issues your startup may face, and previous work experience with startups to ensure a quality and efficient work product. This is absolutely key when matching our startup clients at UpCounsel to attorneys on our platform who can perform their legal work and hash out their legal projects in a timely manner. We also allow clients to store any and all of their legal documents directly on UpCounsel so they don’t have to go searching in alternative places for the correct paperwork. It’s proven to be a free and lightweight way to store legal documents that our clients love. Here's what it looks like:As I’ve mentioned, it’s more important to find the right attorney as opposed to the right law firm. And seeing as you’re a startup, our own startup clients typically save an average of 50-60% on their legal work, since the attorneys don't include overhead fees (a.k.a. the fees included for doing business with the firm itself) in their invoices.Hope this gives you a deeper look into what other sites and services are out there. If you have any questions or would like more information on how best to handle your legal housekeeping/ attorney matters, feel free to signNow out to me directly. As a former startup attorney at Latham & Watkins, I’d be happy to give you some guidance.

Real Estate tends to be either extremely busy or very slow, depending in part on the larger cycles - prices trending up, prices trending down. - and on the shorter cycles - busy in the spring and summer, not so much in the fall & winter. So in the busy times you tend to have too many customers and in the slower times few or none.Because it’s so easy to get a Real Estate license, the Realtor on the other side of any one transaction will be skilled, or not (and there are way too many “nots”.Technology keeps changing. This is my 16th year in the business and it’s dramatically different from when I started. Most of that is good, but it seems like I’m always a little behind the newest technology curve. For example, electronic signatures largely eliminated faxing documents, which is great because by the time another Realtor faxed me a document and I, in turn, faxed it to my client, who faxed it back to me, it was largely unreadable. But instead of buying a $100 fax machine and the special paper, now I pay a $150 annual subscription for signNow. Still, it’s a lot better for the customer, and some easier for me, so I’m happy to do it. And I don’t miss the wall of different paper forms in my office because they’re all available digitally at my desk.The standard forms keep changing. The folks in charge in Oregon try to only make changes once a year, in January. Because the forms are legal documents and Realtors are not Attorneys (so cannot give legal advice), that’s always a challenge.Through all this, I’ve still not lost the joy of handing the keys to a buyer or a check to a seller, or the process it takes to get to that point.

Not even close, most hedge fund managers actually struggle, particularly in the first few years. This is in large part due to the absolutely insane amounts of rules and regulations a small firm has to comply with. I’ll rant a little about how this came about, then provide some figures for you.It is no big secret that big firms on Wall Street (primarily JP Morgan and Goldman) had a big hand in drafting Dodd Frank and updating the SEC (and various state) regulations. There were comments made that this was specifically done to eliminate small hedge funds that were providing the bigger firms with quite a bit of competition. It’s government collusion at its best and a great example of corporations using the government to hurt others. Multi-billion dollar firms can stomach an increase in compliance cost - small businesses cannot.And let’s not pretend that the regulatory changes protected customers any more than the TSA changing the regulations on liquid bottles from 4 oz to 3.6 oz protects passengers. There were already rules and laws on the books to prevent both the Madoff issue and the mortgage collapse (which was almost 100% caused by a combination of government laws, the FED, and agreements with the large banks…but that’s another topic).I run a small firm. I get audited regularly because I do businesses in a number of states. An audit normally takes multiple days (once it took 12 days) and multiple auditors (not infrequent to have 3–6 government employees in the office). They check things like making sure my files are in alphabetical order, that my security license is hung the right number of inches off the floor, that my bills going to my clients are written in an approved font, that my signature block on my email messages contained the government approved statements, and the like. I’ve been chastised for having sent bills on letters with too small of margins.Do you know how many times a government auditor has taken my bank account statements, my brokerage statements, my client statements, and reconciled them to make sure everything was calculated? Once. It happened for the first time this year. When I’ve asked why they don’t check things to ensure that firms aren’t actually stealing client money I get told the auditors really don’t have the education to do that (which is why we also have a requirement to have an independent auditor review everything).The number of rules and regulations I have to comply with is well North of 100,000 pages.Ok Rant Over — now for actual numbers.Here is a rough estimation of the cost to start a fund on a SHOESTRING budget:Create offering documents (private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, fund overview, Form ADV disclosure document, and any others) - $30,000. (And that’s cheap);Assume you only do business in one state - state blue sky filings and notice filings - $1,000PCOAB annual audit - there are VERY few PCOAB auditors that will audit a small fund (I’ve probably talked to them all). If you have a VERY simple fund this will costs $12,000/yr. If you have a more complicated fund with some sort of onshore/offshore mechanism or complex trading instruments, this is going to go north of $20,000 quickly;Annual tax filings - $8,000 (what I paid last year for my fund for federal and state filings); andBusiness formation cost (LLC to act as a GP and a limited partnership for the fund itself) - $1,250 (if you file it all yourself).This assumes you are running things out of a home office, spend zero dollars on marketing and promotion, and do everything yourself (e.g. no payroll expenses), you use a computer you already had, found a free website hosting location (and know the rules on online advertising and don’t have to pay a compliance firm), do all of your client correspondence electronically (no postage - and illegal in some states such as South Dakota where you have to mail things even if everyone agrees to electronic service), you spend nothing on digital security (probably also illegal), have a free trading platform (actually possible), and no other expenses (internet, power, water, phone, fax, etc.) — which is just impossible. But we’ll assume all of those costs are $0 for this example.The above totals to $52,250.Assume the average fund charges a two percent management fee and takes twenty percent of the profits (these fees are actually higher than average as fees have gotten compressed over the last decade).Doing the math, if a small fund manages to raise $5 million from friends, families, and knocking on doors, that seems like a ton of money. You might have gotten $100,000 from 50 different people to get there. (I’ve done this, it’s not easy raising money as a small firm).Take out the above expenses and your left with $47,750.If you have a more reasonable cost — namely you actually rent an office somewhere to meet clients, cost go up quickly. Even if you go to a share space, where you share the cost of a receptionist, copy machine, internet, phones, etc., you’re still going to be spending at least $1,000/month.I run a VERY tight ship and cut every cost I can. We have no frills, perks, or anything, and our annual budget on raw expenses is just over $80,000.00. At a 2% fee, that means I need a $4 million fund to just break even, before making one penny — and have no unexpected costs.Note that DOES NOT INCLUDE payments to myself. That’s the cost of the business. I have also represented small funds as an attorney — very well run ones. I’m the only one I’ve ever encountered that can run the company for under $150,000 (before owner salaries). But let’s stick with the $80,000 number.What’s a reasonable before tax salary in Dallas, Texas? (Remember, your self employed, so your taxes are higher than a normal persons, as you have to pay social security and medicare twice). $100,000 before taxes? That would leave you with a take home of roughly $70,000.So now we are at $180,000 — which requires a $9 million fund. That’s just to have a basic lifestyle met.Most funds out there, particularly startup ones, don’t ever survive. The cost of running it are just too high. The above also doesn’t include the cost of having to pay an attorney and accountant to sit through that week long audit either. I’m lucky in that I can do that myself. If you can’t, or don’t have the knowledge, you just lost another $30,000. Are you not an attorney and don’t know how to keep up with compliance? A good compliance firm will run you $12,000 - $30,000 per year.You get the idea.HOWEVER — if you are good at what you can go, and can generate alpha, and can get through several lean years, things improve. Most funds are scalable (if yours is not, start over).So I only have $5m my first year and actually lose money. But I keep banging on doors the next year and we get up to $10m. Whew, I finally don’t have to rely on the wife’s paycheck to pay the bills. My partner and I only make a few thousand dollars each this year, but at least we’re making money. Keep the head down, keep banging on doors, network, and your fund keeps doing well. Year 4, $50 million.Wow, I now can pay for an assistant and don’t have to stay up to 2am doing paper work and filing 6 days a week. My partner and I actually make a real paycheck (something close to $100k per year). It’s not a GREAT living, but it actually feels like a real job at this point.And now people are starting to call ME, asking how they can invest with us. Weird. About this time you learn about institutional introductions. Wait…you mean there are companies that just write $10m checks or introduce you to people/businesses that do? Amazing. Maybe we can get to a $100m fund in the next 3–4 years and $250m within 10.And, once you get to that size, if you haven’t jumped off a cliff, and if your fund keeps performing…..THEN you get your $1 million/year salary.Hedge funds aren’t any different than any other business. You have to have a good product. You have to market it. You have to keep your customers happy. If you do, and grow well, you can make a million dollars per year.But you know what? I’ve seen people do that in pipeline sales, pool cleaning services, lawn care service, construction, advertising….it doesn’t matter. If your business can be scaled, and you are GOOD at what you do, and know how not to get bloated as you grow, almost any business can be grown to making that type of salary.