When Adobe entered the electronic signature market last year, e-signature startup DocuSign said it was grateful for the market validation, not intimidated by the competition.

But with the news that Adobe has acquired one of DocuSign's key competitors, EchoSign, will the Seattle company be changing its tune?

"EchoSign has not developed a complete solution for large business, severely limiting their market opportunities to small simple business applications," said DocuSign founder and chief strategy officer Tom Gonser in response, via an email exchange.

Gonser had said last year that Adobe's entrance into electronic signatures validated the market, but that DocuSign had a "sizable product lead." At the time, Gonser said that the seven-year-old DocuSign could provide certain components of a business-class e-signature platform -- such as authentication, workflow, data collection and collaboration -- that Adobe's eSignature service could not.

However, with the EchoSign acquisition, Adobe has now gained a fully fledged e-signature startup with six years of experience in the market, 30,000 customers and over 3 million users. Both EchoSign and DocuSign help customers save both time and paper by using an electronic signature rather than traditional methods such as faxing, scanning and mailing.

EchoSign's e-signature platform will be integrated with Adobe's document-handling software, including SendNow, FormsCentral and CreatePDF.

But Gonser maintains that Adobe has only "validated the way DocuSign works as the best way." He said the startup has grown to nearly 80 percent Software-as-a-Service (Saas) market share and provides a robust end-to-end platform for enterprise customers.

"We feel that as a neutral best-of-class provider of electronic contracting, we are more able to span the market than an electronic signature component tied only to one technology," he said. "DocuSign is the only electronic signature provider with a secure global network dedicated to managing the electronic signature process, and we are not aligned with only one technology or platform. We are not distracted with video software, online office suites and hundreds of other products."

Gonser has reason to feel confident. DocuSign has a strong presence in the key real estate market, including an investment from and partnership with the National Association of Realtors, and its service has been used by more than 18,000 real estate agents. In the seven years since its founding, DocuSign has executed over 70 million digital signatures from 8 million customers and is backed by some big names, including salesforce.com, Ignition Partners, Frazier Technology Ventures and Sigma Partners.

It has raised nearly $60 million in funding to date.