Way back in 2004 I was vacationing with my family on Savary Island, a remote island off the coast of British Columbia near Powell River which is known for its white sand beaches and unusually warm ocean water. Before leaving for my vacation, I had picked up a copy of the Inc. 500 magazine and I spent many evening hours poring over the list of companies – especially those in the Software industry category. At that point in time DotNetNuke was an open source project which was getting decent traction; however it had no viable business model and I was essentially the only full-time employee. It was exciting to dream about a future where the product was being used by thousands of organizations worldwide and that it had crossed the commercial chasm to become one of the hottest technology start-ups in North America.
Fast-forward to 2011 and it is very gratifying to see that some of these dreams have become a reality. DotNetNuke Corporation reached the #228 position overall in this years Inc. 500 list of the Fastest Growing Private Companies in North America - #23 in the Software category! This is based on our 2010 revenue and employee count which represent a 3 year growth rate of 1406%! When I stop for a moment to consider the growth of the company over the past 2 years, it really astounds me. To grow from 6 full-time resources in early 2009 to over 60 today is really incredible. And for that team to have the chemistry, cohesion, and raw execution ability to release a game changing Content Management product like DotNetNuke 6, is extremely gratifying. We definitely have the rock solid foundation in place for our next stage of growth, and from there the sky is the limit. And when you consider that DotNetNuke Corporation has only raised a modest $12 million in venture capital through 2 rounds of funding, it is even more remarkable – especially when compared to some of the other high-tech startups in our industry.
I would also like to congratulate one other hot technology company on the 2011 Inc. 500 list. HubSpot provides a marketing software platform that enables users to increase the number of visitors to their websites and convert more of those visitors to leads and customers. HubSpot hit the #33 position overall ( and #2 in the Software category ) on the 2011 Inc. 500 list. Based on the these stellar results, HubSpot successfully raised a Series D round of funding earlier this year of $32 million from prominent investors Sequoia, Google Ventures, and Salesforce.com ( HubSpot had previously raised a total of $33 million in earlier rounds ). The reason I am mentioning HubSpot is because, like many other organizations which use DotNetNuke as a scalable platform to build specialized web applications, some aspects of their marketing platform as well as their corporate website is built on DotNetNuke. So essentially the DotNetNuke product is represented twice on this years Inc. 500 list!