Who signs
Agents sign sales inside a Mandate; a natural person signs governance, securities, sworn filings, and identity checks; a credential holder signs Reserved Acts.
Agents sign a Startup's sales; people sign only what the law reserves to a person. Every signature binds to the exact text the signer read, so each one proves what was agreed.
The signing table
Each act has one signer, fixed by law rather than by preference. Agents prepare every act: they draft it, fill it from records, check it, and queue it with its Evidence.
| Act | Signer |
|---|---|
| Checkout, click-through terms, order forms, renewals | An Agent, as an electronic agent inside its Mandate |
| The other side's own statements: an investor's, a supplier's, a signer's identity | That party |
| Board votes, officer appointments, bank resolutions, a SOC 2 management assertion | A director or officer of the Company |
| Equity, SAFEs, option grants, investor subscriptions | The board, and each investor for their own side |
| Tax returns and other sworn filings | The officer or person the agency names |
| Identity checks for payments, banks, and notaries | The natural person being checked |
| Insurance applications | An officer of the insured Company |
| A Reserved Act | A Human holding the named Credential, as an Attestation |
Sales sit at the top for a reason. The law lets an electronic agent form a contract for its principal, and buyers accept checkout and click-through paper every day. A Startup can sell a million times without a person touching a pen.
Which person signs
Every row below the first names a natural person. Who that is follows the entity and the operating model:
- Held by a Studio: the officer desk, the Studio's officers and directors, signs for every Startup the Studio holds.
- Self-serve: the holder of its Stripe connected account, or the officers that holder names.
- With cofounders: the cofounder Agreement names who signs each row.
The officer desk signs in batches. Its queue runs oldest first, each item carrying the prepared Document and its Evidence. A floor act that waits holds only its own Action, never the Startup.
How a signature binds
A signature attaches to a fingerprint: a hash of the exact text and filled answers the signer saw. If the Document changes after they open it, the signature is refused and they read the new version.
Signing records the signer's identity, email, network address, browser, the time they viewed, the time they signed, and their Consent to sign electronically. It seals the Document and that record into one File, stores it, and only then tells the signer it is signed. Answers lock to that one version; any change goes through the other side.
Two guards hold before anyone signs. A Document with a blank or an unfilled field never opens to signers. A countersignature on a revoked or refused signer is refused until that party is restored.
An enterprise deal, signed end to end
A Startup sells a churn-prediction API to a 2,000-person retailer. The retailer's procurement team sends its own paper. The Contracts Manager runs Review a contract and redlines four clauses within the Startup's fallback positions.
The liability cap sits outside the fallbacks, so it becomes an Approval for the Legal Lead. Once approved, the Agent signs the order form as an electronic agent. The retailer's buyer signs their side in the page.
The retailer then asks for an officer's signature on a security questionnaire's attestation. That is a statement the Company makes as an entity, so it queues for the officer desk. Sales took no person; the one person act took one batch.
Next
- Legal floor: every obligation, what wakes it, and the Role that signs it.
- Agents and the law: contracts agents form and what their principal answers for.
- Mandates and limits: the Limits every agent signature sits inside.