Dave Hersh, co-founder and former CEO of Jive Software, shares the real story behind bootstrapping Jive to $12M in revenue before raising venture capital and scaling aggressively. He explains how fear, comparison, and the pressure to "go big" drove him to abandon his profitable core business and pursue a new upmarket strategy that ultimately cost the company its soul.

After growing to $60 million, Jive eventually went public, but not without internal strain, personal turmoil, and ultimately the realization that the company had drifted away from what made it successful.

Dave discusses how overexpansion, premature scaling, hiring missteps, and market-chasing derail both VC-backed and bootstrapped companies—along with the psychological patterns founders rarely acknowledge.

He shares lessons from his book "Reignition: Transforming Stuck Startups Into Breakout Winners" on why most stuck companies don't need a new strategy—they need a wiser founder who understands their inner operating system and is willing to grow alongside the business.

Today Dave coaches founders, writes about the emotional foundations of leadership, and acquires underperforming SaaS companies to "refound" them with more clarity, connection, and human-first strategy.

Key Takeaways

• Founder Psychology Matters — Most stuck companies trace back to subconscious patterns, not strategy failures, and founders must address these to grow.
• Premature Scaling Kills — Expanding markets or teams too quickly dilutes the core and creates complexity most companies cannot absorb.
• Core Before Expansion — Winning in a beachhead and protecting the core creates more durable growth than chasing adjacent market too early.
• Better Growth Pace — Sustainable companies grow at the pace the market allows; forced hypergrowth often destabilizes otherwise healthy businesses.

Quote from Dave Hersh, Co-founder and Former CEO of Jive Software

"I realized that 90% of stuck companies and failed companies are not the reasons that we say they failed. Like they didn't have product market fit or they ran out of cash or the founders didn't get along. It's the psychology underneath. If you actually look at the source of those problems, It was these very consistent psychological patterns that founders run into.

"So hero complex, warrior, imposter syndrome, over identification with the company. It was all of these things that I kept seeing over and over again that led to the decisions that got them stuck. And so, yes, while it's true, they got out competed. Why did they go after the big market? What led them to do that? Why did they try to compete against these companies they were competing against?

"And then you start to tap into what's really going on and you see: They're trying to earn validation. They are trying to get redeemed as an entrepreneur. They're trying to live up to their parents, their older sibling, their peer group. And it was that desire that led to them trying to go after this big market and raising too much money that got them stuck. And so I like to work with the source material, which is, Why did you do that?"

Links

• Dave Hersh on LinkedIn
• Book by Dave Hersh: Reignition: Transforming Stuck Startups into Breakout Winners
• Dave Hersh website

This podcast is sponsored by Fraction. Fraction gives you access to senior US-based engineers and CTOs — without full-time costs or hiring risks. Get 10 to 30 hours per week from vetted and experienced US-based talent.

Find your next fractional senior engineer or CTO at fraction.work. You can start with a one-week, risk-free trial to test it out.

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups

Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding. A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

Josh Ho is the Founder and CEO of Referral Rock, a bootstrapped referral marketing platform serving SMBs that rely on multi-step, relationship-driven sales. Starting in 2015 as a solo developer consulting on the side, Josh built the first version himself, validated demand quickly, and landed early customers by doing demos and hands-on support.

Referral Rock has grown to roughly 500 customers, 20 team members, and about $3M in annual revenue. The company scaled through strong inbound SEO, founder-led sales, and a high-touch onboarding model for B2B businesses that value referrals. Over the years, the product expanded too broadly, creating UX and complexity challenges that later required a deliberate refocusing on core use cases.

Today, Referral Rock is profitable, founder-owned, and steady at its current revenue plateau as Josh rethinks pricing, packaging, product simplicity, and ICP focus. He shares practical lessons on avoiding over-complexity, hiring from what you've already figured out, returning to first principles, and treating plateaus as puzzles to solve rather than signs of failure.

Key Takeaways

• Charge Early, Not Late – His first startup delayed monetization; Referral Rock asked for payment within days of launching an MVP.
• Pricing For Segments– Good-better-best failed for SMBs with wildly different referral economics; switching to two specific lanes solved misalignment.
• Do the Job First – Hiring worked only after Josh personally figured out support, sales, or marketing enough to define the role clearly.
• Plateaus Aren't Failure – Post-COVID shifts and SEO changes slowed growth, but Josh treats plateaus as system puzzles, not existential threats.
• Profit Equals Freedom – With no investors and steady profitability, he optimizes for enjoyable work, long-term optionality, and building at his own pace.

Quote from Josh Ho, Founder and CEO of Referral Rock

"For me, a plateau or a pivot is a puzzle to be solved. Any time you try to build something, you hope to just keep hitting accelerators and different serendipitously find those things. But I've learned through my life, the most part, there are things that work only for a certain duration, right.

"For me, it comes back to how I think about the business and. my innate goals for the business which, are different from most founders. When I'm talking to another founder is, they'll ask me what my exit strategy is. And my answer is usually, Well, I don't really have one. That's not how I think about the business. It's a very clear.

"I enjoy my work and that's my North Star. Am I having fun? Do I enjoy this work? And I also continuously reinvent myself and my role to fit those changes.. There might be a job I had to do that I don't enjoy, but then I'll do that until it's no longer like the limiting step and then hire someone to backfill for myself."

Links

• Josh Ho on LinkedIn
• Referra lRock on LinkedIn
• Referral Rock website

This podcast is sponsored by Designli, a digital product studio that helps entrepreneurs and startups turn their software ideas into reality. From strategy and design to full-scale development, Designli guides you through every step of building custom web and mobile apps. Learn more at designli.co/practical.

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups

Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding. A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

Shailesh Hegde is the CEO of Hubilo, a Bangalore-based webinar software company that initially started during COVID as virtual events tech and raised $150M in VC funding before the market shifted. Originally joining as head of product, he stepped into the CEO role during a chaotic downturn and led the company through a full strategic reset after returning all the remaining capital to investors.

When the virtual events boom collapsed, Shailesh and the team rebuilt Hubilo into a mid-market webinar platform serving B2B marketing teams. They shifted from large in-person event organizers to marketers running frequent webinars, emphasizing differentiated AI-driven content repurposing. Hubilo stabilized revenue, rebuilt its GTM motion, and reached a 50/50 split between new webinar revenue and legacy customers.

Earlier this year, Hubilo was acquired by BrandLive, a U.S. enterprise video platform seeking a complementary webinar product. About 80% of Hubilo's team moved over, and Shailesh now leads product integration and customer continuity during the transition. He shares hard lessons on pivots, returning capital, leading through uncertainty, and executing a practical exit when the original VC-scale vision is no longer realistic.

Key Takeaways

• Refounder Mindset – Shailesh stepped into the CEO role and reframed the mission from hypergrowth to survival, focus, and a practical exit.
• New ICP Reality – Moving from event organizers to B2B marketers required a complete repositioning and GTM rebuild that took longer than expected.
• AI as Differentiator – Hubilo used AI-generated content and repurposing tools to stand out in a crowded webinar category with entrenched incumbents.
• Practical GTM – LinkedIn thought leadership, SEO content, and product-led demos outperformed outbound or expensive Google ads in this competitive space.
• Strategic Fit Wins – BrandLive acquired Hubilo for complementary capabilities, product acceleration, and access to a strong India-based engineering team.

Quote from Shailesh Hegde, CEO of Hubilo

"Now that I just sold our company, I'm thinking about what's next for me. It comes down to, Will I be able to find a viable problem that people are willing to pay for and will I be able to use sort of all of this experience that I have in order to solve it really well and kick off a company off the ground?

"Now is probably the best time to start a company where there's so much action, there's so much happening in AI, and it's super exciting to be in this space. It's also a great time to not have like revenue pressure on your shoulders and just think out loud, have open conversations and just be free, before you really dive in and choose a focus.

"The same types of business pressures will come back as you start a company. But now is a great time to just help with transition, make sure the team is good, but at the same time, start thinking about the types of problems I want to solve in the future with a new startup."

Links

• Shailesh Hegde on LinkedIn
• Hubilo on LinkedIn
• Hubilo website
• Brandlive website

This podcast is sponsored by Fraction. Fraction gives you access to senior US-based engineers and CTOs — without full-time costs or hiring risks. Get 10 to 30 hours per week from vetted and experienced US-based talent.

Find your next fractional senior engineer or CTO at fraction.work. You can start with a one-week, risk-free trial to test it out.

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups

Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding. A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

Raju Patel founded eShow over 25 years ago after building a speaker portal for a magazine company and realizing he had a repeatable software product. What began as a one-man shop in suburban Chicago evolved into a robust event-management platform serving associations that needed complex, multi-module functionality. His business grew steadily as he delivered registration, booth management, speaker portals, and onsite systems for demanding event teams.

Today eShow has 125 employees, more than 14 integrated modules, and supports hundreds of events each year for 300+ customers, including large association conferences with tens of thousands of attendees. The company has always been profitable, self-funded, and built through careful reinvestment, steady hiring, and deep product expansion. Raju rebuilt the platform multiple times, including a shift to a modern stack.

Still independent with over $10 million in revenues, Raju is now building a VP-level leadership team, exploring practical growth capital, and planning a hybrid event model that blends in-person and virtual experiences. His story highlights long-term passion, practical growth, and a deliberate shift from hands-on founder to capable CEO after decades in the game.

Key Takeaways

• Deep Domain Focus – Serving the most complex association events created defensible differentiation.
• Slow, Steady Compounding – Year-over-year growth came from incremental improvements, not big bet.
• Passion Over Money – Raju built for love of the work, not an exit, which sustained him through decades of change.
• Multiple Rewrites Needed – Long-term SaaS requires full platform rebuilds, and Raju completed two with a third underway on a modern stack.
• Late-Stage Professionalization – Hiring VPs, defining ICPs, and strengthening leadership came only after passing the $10M threshold.

Quote from Raju Patel, founder of eShow

"Looking back after 20 years running this as a small business in software, think I would have figured out how to pull a little bit more money out. It would have given me a better peace of mind."

"I wouldn't have even known how to spend if I pulled a million out back then, it would have been wasted. I was very frugal and investing in my business every year."

"But now I could figure out how to spend a million dollars, on savings and other personal spending that would be meaningful. It would be liberating. I deserve it, so I'm going to spend a little bit more, not be frugal. I can be frugal in my business and in my personal life not be so frugal!"

Links

• Raju Patel on LinkedIn
• eShow on LinkedIn
• eShow website

This podcast is sponsored by Full Scale, one of the fastest-growing software development companies in any region. Full Scale vets, employs, and supports over 300 professional developers, designers, and testers in the Philippines who can augment and extend your core dev team. Learn more at fullscale.io.

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups

Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding. A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

Dharshan Rangegowda, founder of ScaleGrid, left a decade-long engineering career at Microsoft to solve a painful database operations problem he had lived firsthand. After early missteps selling to enterprises, he shifted to helping developers manage MongoDB, Redis, and Postgres on the cloud, bootstrapping the business from scratch.

ScaleGrid grew steadily through product depth, technical support, and Dharshan's mastery of SEO—becoming the top organic result for many key searches. The company expanded into multiple database engines, added a distributed engineering team, and reached 20 employees by 2021, serving both SMB developers and some enterprise teams.

Dharshan sold a majority stake to Spotlight Equity Partners during the pandemic after receiving an unsolicited offer, later stepping out of day-to-day operations while remaining on the board.

In this conversation, Dharshan shares hard-earned lessons about product-led growth, support as strategy, SEO as a long-game advantage, and how bootstrapped founders can build meaningful outcomes in massive markets.

Key Takeaways

• SEO Power: SEO remains a long-term growth engine for bootstrappers because big VC-backed companies rarely have the patience to compound it.
• Support as Strategy: Deep, responsive technical support became ScaleGrid's differentiator and directly informed product innovation and content.
• Start at the Edges: Enterprises won't buy from a one-person startup, but edge users with urgent problems will — and they become your early beachhead.
• Bootstrap Constraints: Founder over-frugality can limit growth; strategic delegation and early team building prevent burnout and plateauing.

Quote from Dharshan Rangegowda, founder of ScaleGrid

"You can't take random people and make them an entrepreneur. You have to want to be an entrepreneur and want to be on your own. You have to enjoy the freedom and the risk and the upside that comes with it and the unmitigated downside as well. You have to accept and be comfortable with it.

"You want to be on your own so you can try things. You are constantly looking at problems and new solutions. You want to be around people who like that sort of process: Here's a new problem and here's a new solution.

"But the most important thing you have to do as an entrepreneur is you have to add value to your customers. And most people forget that."

Links

• Dharshan Rangegowda on LinkedIn
• ScaleGrid on LinkedIn
• ScaleGrid website
• Spotlight Equity Partners (acquirer)
• Allied Advisers (M&A advisor)
• AngelPad Accelerator

This podcast is sponsored by Designli, a digital product studio that helps entrepreneurs and startups turn their software ideas into reality. From strategy and design to full-scale development, Designli guides you through every step of building custom web and mobile apps. Learn more at designli.co/practical.

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups

Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding. A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

Gaurav Bhasin is the founder and managing director of Allied Advisers, an M&A advisory firm whose principals have completed over 100 sell-side transactions for software and tech founders. After two decades in investment banking and tech M&A, Gaurav is a sell-side advisor to B2B software founders who have built successful businesses and want to explore selling their companies.

Allied Advisers typically works with founders selling their businesses for $20M–$200M, helping them prepare materials, run a competitive process, and negotiate terms.

We discuss how today's M&A market looks very different from the 2021 bubble. Valuations have normalized, deal timelines have increased, and buyers are more disciplined. But the demand for profitable, steadily growing SaaS companies is stronger than ever.

Gaurav breaks down strategic and private equity buyers, what metrics matter most, how AI influences valuations, and why most founders underestimate the emotional and operational effort required to sell. For practical founders thinking about an exit in the next few years, this episode provides clear expectations and tactical guidance.

Key Takeaways

• Profitable Growth Wins — Buyers prefer SaaS companies growing 20–50% with real profits over faster revenue growth fueled by burn.
• Metrics Drive Valuation — Net retention above 110%, gross retention above 90%, and >75% gross margins increase valuation and buyer interest.
• Run a Real Process — A single buyer gives you no leverage. Multiple qualified buyers improve pricing, terms, and closing certainty.
• AI Is Lipstick — But Real — You don't need to be AI-native. Practical AI that improves product, margin, or GTM still increases buyer interest.

Quote from Gaurav Bhasin, founder and managing director of Allied Advisers

"The good news for SaaS founders is that the private equity community has raised about $1.5 trillion of capital, and more is being raised. And they also have access to debt. So there's $7 trillion of dry powder to do deals. Private equity is not paid to sit on the cash. And they love recurring revenue software.

"Private equity investors will typically move much faster than strategic buyers. Strategics will take a while. You need a business unit sponsor to buy into the vision, and then they will push the corporate to do the deal. But with the private equity, they will look at your financial metrics and if you fit in, they can move pretty fast.

"The one caveat with private equity compared to strategic is they generally pay a little bit less than the strategics because strategics have established distribution and GTM for higher growth, so private equity will index more on the financials."

Links

• Gaurav Bhasin on LinkedIn
• Allied Advisers on LinkedIn
• Allied Advisers website
• 2025 Vertical SaaS Report - Allied Advisers

This podcast is sponsored by Fraction. Fraction gives you access to senior US-based engineers and CTOs — without full-time costs or hiring risks. Get 10 to 30 hours per week from vetted and experienced US-based talent.

Find your next fractional senior engineer or CTO at fraction.work. You can start with a one-week, risk-free trial to test it out.

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups

Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding. A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

Natalie Barbu is the founder and CEO of Rella, a SaaS platform built to streamline collaboration and workflows for social media teams and agencies. She began as a YouTube creator, grew a following of over 300,000, and then identified the fragmentation of the creator tools market — which led her to build Rella 1.0.

With some small seed funding, the first Rella version focused on content creators and made no revenue with a freemium model. With $25K in the bank and no revenue, the four cofounders thought they would shut it down. But a viral video focused on social media teams immediately created paid users and revenue for a new Rella product.

"Rella 2.0" now offers all-in-one content planning, scheduling, collaboration boards, billing & analytics, an AI content strategist, and all in one workspace — for social media teams. In just 12 months, they went from having no revenue, no funding, and a hard pivot relaunch to almost $3M in ARR run-rate revenue — with only four co-founder employees.

Key Takeaways

• Charge Early: They learned the hard way that free users don't convert — monetization early was non-negotiable.
• Lean Teams Win: A small, focused team aligned tightly with a mission beats trying to scale prematurely.
• Community Is Fuel: Natalie shared behind-the-scenes of the product with early users — built trust + word-of-mouth.
• Pivot Smart: They transitioned from creator workflow tools to a full SaaS platform after validating demand.

This Interview Is Perfect For

• SaaS founders pivoting after a stalled product
• Founders learning how to find product-market fit
• Teams deciding when to hire or stay lean
• Builders designing tools for marketing and content teams

Quote from Natalie Barbu, founder and CEO of Rella

"It was about two years before we decided to pay ourselves. I was still making money from my social media. So that's how I supported myself. And then my co-founders had to find side things, which I know a lot of people say, you have to be a hundred percent all in and invested in it.

"But when you're not making money, you need to find a way to support yourself. So yeah, they had some side gigs that they were working on while still working full-time on Rella.

"Once we started making more money with Rella 2.0, we all bumped ourselves up and got some raises since we could afford it, which has been such an accomplishment. It's money that we're actually making from our customers and our users and the income that we're generating."

Links

• Natalie Barbu on LinkedIn
• Rella on LinkedIn
• Rella website - Use this 10% Discount Code for Rella - practical

This podcast is sponsored by Cypress Growth Capital, an alternative to equity, royalty-based growth capital provides funding in exchange for a fixed percentage of your company's future monthly revenues. Learn more at https://www.cypressgrowthcapital.com/

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups

Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding. A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

In this episode, the founder of Practical Founders, Greg Head, shares the most powerful insights from over 165 podcast interviews and working with 40+ bootstrapped SaaS founders in his peer groups. Greg breaks down the common but less obvious traits he sees in practical founders who are quietly building valuable software companies without big VC funding.

Greg shares how frugality and managed risk-taking coexist to create compounding steady growth, creating massive long-term value fpr practical founders. And independence and doing it your way are not just luxuries but real superpowers that fuel growth. These patterns have emerged across hundreds of founders he's worked with, representing over $10 billion in founder equity value created.

For SaaS founders skeptical of VC templates and PE playbooks Greg shares what all practical founders do to grow from $1M to $10M ARR without betting it all. Are you wired like a Practical Founder?

Key Takeaways

• Frugal yet bold – Practical founders are unusually frugal in life but make well-timed bold bets inside their companies.
• Managed risk – They avoid betting the whole company, instead making small bets that can compound into larger wins.
• Compounding focus – Long-term, steady 20–30% growth creates exponential outcomes in SaaS over 10–15 years.
• Independence premium – Protecting their ability to do it their way is treated as a strategic advantage.
• Optionality matters – Practical founders value flexibility to sell, go long, or change direction without outside control.

This Interview Is Perfect For

• Founders building SaaS without VC funding
• CEOs who value control and sustainable growth
• Entrepreneurs exploring long-term leverage vs. quick wins
• Anyone who wants to understand the practical founder mindset

Quote from Greg Head, founder of Practical Founders

"The simple math of a $1 million ARR recurring revenue business that grows at 30% a year, will become very valuable if it keeps growing. ? Not crazy growth, a reasonable pace. This is the fundamental principle of recurring revenue businesses, that it's a compounding machine.

"If you grow at 30% for nine years, you'll have a $10 million business. And if you do that for another nine years, you will have a $100 million business. That's probably worth a billion dollars by that time. That sounds simple and not everybody gets there, of course, but practical founders think in this way. Steady, healthy compounding.

"We know that in the long run, the 10 years, the 20 years, compounding makes the difference. It's a healthier approach. We actually like this approach, generally speaking. We understand the math and yes, we're doing it. Most people don't really sign up for this kind of thing."

Links

• Greg Head on LinkedIn
• Practical Founders on LinkedIn
• Practical Founders website

This podcast is sponsored by Designli, a digital product studio that helps entrepreneurs and startups turn their software ideas into reality. From strategy and design to full-scale development, Designli guides you through every step of building custom web and mobile apps. Learn more at designli.co/practical.

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups

Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding. A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

Darryl Pahl is the co-founder of DFnet, a Seattle-based company providing clinical trial data management software and services. Along with his wife and co-founder, Lisa Ondrejcek, Darryl started the company more than 20 years ago after careers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. They built DFnet around long-term client relationships in global health and clinical research.

The company runs DFdiscover, an enterprise-grade electronic data capture and management platform used in clinical studies worldwide. With offices in the U.S., Canada, and South Africa, DFnet has grown to more than 50 employees and is approaching $10M in revenue. Clients range from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to nonprofits like PATH and major universities.

Still independent and bootstrapped, DFnet has made key moves to prepare for the future—such as bringing in a growth-focused CEO, diversifying beyond single-client risk, and shifting legacy software to SaaS and services. Darryl shares the lessons from running conservatively under debt, buying rather than building, and building a global company rooted in relationships and practical execution.

Key Takeaways

• Stability First Growth – Carrying a 10-year SBA loan forced conservative growth and taught the discipline of stability over risky expansion.
• Buying Not Building – Acquiring DataFax brought 35+ new clients overnight and proved that buying legacy software can be smarter than reinventing.
• Services Plus Software – Unlike pure SaaS, DFnet thrives by combining consulting, hosting, and software in a regulated field.
• Spouse Founders Structure – Their 51/49 ownership split avoided deadlocks and kept marriage and business aligned.

This Interview Is Perfect For

• SaaS founders balancing growth and control
• Founders considering succession or sale
• Bootstrapped entrepreneurs in niche B2B markets
• Anyone curious about global health data and impact-driven tech

Quote from Darryl Pahl, co-founder of DFnet

"The best position to be in is to say that in three to five years, we would be crazy to sell this company. It's doing so well. That would be the perfect thing. And what we're not looking for is a giant payout. We have a very modest lifestyle.

"But is an asset, it is a business, and there's a business aspect. It would have to be the right type of buyer. It has to be the right fit. It has to be the right person or group that is respectful to our clients, our employees, and us as owners.

"So the ideal would be to have the luxury of either not selling or being more selective rather than responding to random emails from some financial buyer or search funder."

Links

• Darryl Paul on LinkedIn
• DFnet on LinkedIn
• DFnet website

This podcast is sponsored by Fraction. Fraction gives you access to senior US-based engineers and CTOs — without full-time costs or hiring risks. Get 10 to 30 hours per week from vetted and experienced US-based talent.

Find your next fractional senior engineer or CTO at fraction.work. You can start with a one-week, risk-free trial to test it out.

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups

Be part of a committed and confidential group of practical founders creating valuable software companies without big VC funding. A Practical Founders Peer Group is a committed and confidential group of founders/CEOs who want to help you succeed on your terms. Each Practical Founders Peer Group is personally curated and moderated by Greg Head.

Vincent Serpico, veteran CTO and founder of Founders Workshop, is on the front lines of the AI revolution in 2025, reshaping software development and business operations. With more than 30 years of experience building software apps, Vincent is now dedicating himself full-time to AI coaching and workshops for teams and companies to create high-leverage impact quickly.

Vincent shares how practical SaaS founders are leveraging agents, vibe coding, and tools like OpenAI's Agent Kit to multiply output without adding headcount. He sees the shift from SEO to GEO, the rise of ChatGPT apps, and why domain expertise is the ultimate competitive moat for SaaS founders navigating this new economy.

Now leading Serpico.ai, Vincent describes how entire applications can be built without writing code, using natural language and iterative management. He stresses that daily AI use, human-in-the-loop workflows, and focusing on domain-driven innovation will give practical founders the edge in this seismic shift.

Key Takeaways

• Agents As Labor – AI agents perform multi-step workflows like employees, delivering productivity gains with human-in-the-loop oversight.
• Domain Expertise Moat – Deep customer and industry knowledge matters more than raw coding speed in the AI economy.
• Vibe Coding Skills – Non-coders can now build apps with natural language prompts, managing AI like junior employees.
• Practical AI Adoption – Founders should start with small use cases, building workflows before tackling complex projects.
• Great Arbitrage Period – Founders who embrace AI now gain massive leverage over competitors who resist change.

This Interview Is Perfect For

• SaaS founders ready to apply AI beyond experiments
• Product leaders exploring AI-driven workflows
• Developers curious about vibe coding and agentic design
• Founders building lean, AI-powered teams

Quote from Vincent Serpico, founder of Serpico.ai

"If you're not an expert in something, AI will probably make you two to three times better than you currently are. But if you are an expert in something, AI will make you 10x better.

"If you're already a domain expert, using AI will make you 10x better. Those are the ones that you should be hiring and paying outpaced salaries to, and build your tiny team—domain experts who are great at AI.

"If I want to use AI in real estate, I could do it, but a guy who's been a real estate agent for 30 years will do much better if he understands AI skills like how to prompt and context engineer.

"So we'll see hiring domain experts and paying them outsized salaries because they're utilizing AI and producing five, six times more than they could without it."

Links

• Vincent Serpico on LinkedIn
• Serpico AI website

This podcast is sponsored by Cypress Growth Capital, an alternative to equity, royalty-based growth capital provides funding in exchange for a fixed percentage of your company's future monthly revenues. Learn more at https://www.cypressgrowthcapital.com/

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