In early 2002, DotNetNuke 1.0 was born to an open source community. That same year, one man and one server in Omaha, Nebraska started what would one day become the most recognized name in the DotNetNuke community and serve as an icon of professionalism and quality. Originally focused completely on hosting, PowerDNN offered top-speed DotNetNuke hosting with real support. Later that year, a major milestone occured when Tony Valenti, the original founder, set up the second shared hosting server and hired Mindy Capello, the company's first employee, who would handle all accounting and billing.
Mindy quickly made her mark on the company by taking over customer setups as well. This allowed Tony to completely focus on customer support while she handled all customer management. Even though the company was young and small, this team of two worked together so effectively that it would be some years before PowerDNN needed any additional employees.
One day in mid-2004, Tony was having lunch with John Grange, a business associate who worked for a medical technology company. After hearing about PowerDNN's mission and internal infrastructure, John was so intrigued by PowerDNN that he started volunteering his time to learn about DotNetNuke as well as analyze PowerDNN's business model. Within months, at John's suggestion, PowerDNN expanded its product line to incude dedicated servers and virtual servers. Soon after that launch, John joined PowerDNN as a full time employee and quickly took over a majority of PowerDNN's business management.
Since 2005, PowerDNN has been serving the international DotNetNuke community and has been focused on reaching high end DotNetNuke users with high end services and support. On average, PowerDNN is hiring one new employee per month and is always pushing the limits of what DotNetNuke can do.
Unlike most managers and executives who found a company and then distance themselves from it, Tony Valenti and John Grange still take an active role in PowerDNN's technology and infrastructure. Even though Tony is the owner, he still loves to do hands on development and training for PowerDNN's employees and customers. John is now VP of Corporate Strategy but he still loves taking sales and support calls.