DFnet
👤 Darryl Pahl & Lisa Ondrejcek (Married co-founders from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; they managed trial data before selling the software for it.)🌐 siteLinkedIn
Drug trials legally need validated data systems. DFnet bought the old DataFax tool and its clients, then modernized it.
Will it work? · our read
Quietly unkillable. An unglamorous niche with far larger rivals. But FDA rules guarantee the demand, trials can't switch mid-study, and DFnet has grown steadily for 20 years.
01How the money moves
Drug trial legally needs validated data capture
→
DFnet configures DFdiscover and runs the data
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Charges license plus data services per study, for years
02The numbers
About $10MStatedrevenue, SaaS + services
2025source:
approaching $10M in revenue
Revenue and history are founder-stated on Practical Founders (Oct 2025); the compliance badge is from a third-party EDC directory listing. Practical Founders #167
About $10M across DFdiscover licenses and data-management services; bootstrapped since 2004, about 50 staff, no VC.
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Practical Founders #167 — Darryl Pahl, DFnet (Oct 2025): show notes state "approaching $10M in revenue", bootstrapped 20+ yrs, about 50 staff, DataFax acquisition brought 35+ clients.BetterClinical — DFnet/DFdiscover EDC listing: "compliant with FDA 21 CFR Part 11"; hybrid paper + EDC capture.Software Hamilton — DataFax (2011): Clinical DataFax Systems Inc., Hamilton, Ontario; 19+ yrs, 1,000+ sites, 10,000+ patients, no FDA citations.CDISC — DF/Net Research member profile: 10+ year member of the clinical-data standards body.
Revenue is first-party but STATED, not filed: the Practical Founders podcast page (episode #167, Oct 23 2025, featuring co-founder Darryl Pahl) states in its show notes that DFnet "has grown to more than 50 employees and is approaching $10M in revenue." That is third-person narrative summarizing the episode, not a marked verbatim quote from Pahl, but it is first-party content built from his own interview, so STATED still applies. That figure is total company revenue — DFdiscover software licenses plus data-management services — and is not broken out or audited, so treat it as a blended, self-reported number. Founding (Seattle, 2004), bootstrapped and still-independent status, about 50 staff, and the DataFax acquisition (35+ clients overnight) are from the same page, which I opened. The 21 CFR Part 11 compliance is from a third-party EDC directory listing (opened); DataFax's pre-DFnet history (Clinical DataFax Systems Inc., Hamilton, Ontario) is from Software Hamilton, a secondary source (opened). DFnet's own site was rate-limiting (HTTP 503), so no claim here rests on a page I could not read. No documented drama — this is a slow, patient execution-and-timing story, not a scandal. We never score you.