V-Empower, Inc. was the brain child of it's founder and his two cousins right after the dot-com's crash in 2000. Starting with a small team of 6 developers, they built a very innovative technology of connecting voters/citizens with their elected officials www.statedemocracy.com. As a product development company, V-Empower, Inc. built many products in the past 20 years, some of which were ahead of their time. In 2004, they moved into providing services. Leveraging their expertise, V-Empower, Inc. built some incredible products for Votenet (now defunct) as a sub-contractor for Howard Dean's campaign for President. They also provided services to Microsoft in the area of Privacy and Application Security. As a small company, not funded by an institution for product development, all profits were invested into building new applications. They were part of many start-ups in 2008, but the deep recession triggered them to slow down, shut down some of the ideas, and sell some of their Apps for pennies on the dollar. Although the company survived the economic crisis, it's revenue went down from $ 6.2 million in 2007 to $ 210,000 in 2010. They made a very strategic decision not to expand their consulting/services practice; rather, they kept building solutions and are currently working on many applications. V-Empower, Inc. maintained and nurtured entrepreneurial spirit and personal growth in the company and proudly assisted and encouraged many employees to start their own businesses. They have built over 40 Applications with an average of 2 every year. From it's inception, the company incorporated philanthropy and corporate social responsibility as an integral value. Over the past 20 years, V-Empower, Inc. has given to over 115 non-profits worldwide. They have contributed over $ 600,000 in cash and over $ 2 million as in-kind contributions. Also, they have been consistently ranked in the top 50 in giving in the Washington area by the Washington Business Journal.