Medidata sold drug companies a way to run clinical trials without paper. Its Medidata Rave platform captured patient data electronically and managed it in one hosted system, replacing the binders and forms that slowed trials down. Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Amgen, Astellas and Takeda were its biggest customers in early 2009. That June, in the depths of the financial crisis, the New York company went public at $14 a share.

Three Founders on Fifth Avenue

Medidata was organized as a New York corporation in June 1999 and kept its offices on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Tarek Sherif became chief executive in 2001. Glen de Vries served as chief technology officer before becoming president in 2008. Edward Ikeguchi, a physician, sat on the board. The bet was that testing new medicines would move to the web, from protocol design and investigator contracts to data capture and analysis.

Dassault Pays $92.25

Medidata priced its IPO at $14 a share in June 2009 and listed on the Nasdaq Global Market as MDSO. It sold 6.3 million shares. Over the next decade it grew into one of the largest cloud software companies serving drug and device makers. In 2019 France's Dassault Systèmes agreed to buy Medidata for $92.25 a share in cash, about $5.8 billion in all. The deal closed that October.

Cover: Flying Raven: ex libris, from The Raven (Le Corbeau), Édouard Manet. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a flying raven (Medidata Rave).