After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana with a degree in Computer Science Engineering, John worked for a variety of large and small software companies in the Chicago area before starting his own freelance consulting company. John then spent 7 years doing freelance web development using technologies such as ColdFusion and Microsoft ASP.  He then joined a friend's VC-backed startup company as employee #7.  John was the Chief Technology Officer of this internet-based real estate startup named iNest.com and helped guide the firm from $1 million to $25 million in revenues.  Eventually the company was sold to LendingTree at the height of the real estate boom.

After leaving iNest/LendingTree, John went back to freelance consulting, this time based solely on open source technologies.  He eventually started SiteBasin, a niche hosting and web development firm focused solely on the Drupal CMS.  At SiteBasin, John's top priority has been security.  All SiteBasin servers are hardened against instrusions and locked down so only users with special keys can get access. This allows SiteBasin to offer a secure and safe "Drupal ecosystem" for customer deployments that other companies hosting in the cloud can't match without a custom build. SiteBasin also includes Drupal core updates within the standard hosting fee, a feature that other companies only offer as part of more expensive "managed" hosting.