PandaDoc CEO Mikita Mikado is Riding a Digital Wave That’s Not Slowing Down

Seeing the opportunities in the global pandemic has been important for brands that are not only surviving but thriving in the new normal. PandaDoc, a SaaS platform that streamlines documents and electronic signatures, is one of those organizations. In this podcast, Mikita Mikado, CEO of PandaDoc, talks about the PandaDoc story and how it’s grown by helping its customers through COVID. Mikita Mikado: entrepreneurial success story Mikita Mikado was 19 years old when he entered a student exchange program that took him from Belarus to Hawaii and changed his life. After learning English, Mikado began building websites, and eventually built a software development business. That evolved into what is now known as PandaDoc, after Mikado saw a need to make document sharing easy, straightforward and safe. “When I look back, I’m glad that I got presented with this wonderful opportunity to come to this country and do all that I’ve done,” says Mikado in his description of his early days in America at 2:22. Opportunities to help during COVID When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, PandaDoc launched a free electronic signing solution that helped customers sign their documents safely. That move essentially became a freemium business model that generated brand loyalty as those customers moved to a premium version of the software once their businesses stabilized. “A lot of our customers found that a helpful transition to the solution,” Mikado says in his discussion on the PandaDoc history at 9:20. “Then things improved quite a bit for us.” Keeping employees motivated through COVID As with many brands, the sudden change to a remote workforce when COVID struck was challenging for PandaDoc. One of the key ways PandaDoc kept employees engaged during that time was to communicate openly with them. “We’ve always been a transparent company, and throughout 2020, we tried to increase the levels of transparency because it gets so hard to communicate unless you’re open about your clients’ intentions, strategy, thought processes,” says Mikato in his discussion of the COVID pandemic at 15:56. Moving forward, Mikato expects PandaDoc will remain agile, with workers choosing whether to continue working remote, or coming into a physical office. Regardless, core values of the company remain the same. “There are three things that we care deeply about,” Mikado said at 18:48. “I am looking forward for PandaDoc to be a better, bigger place where more people learn and teach, make a positive impact and have a lot of fun. I think the market we’re in allows for explosive growth as long as we can execute.”