Dan & Kathy Oaks with their children (from left to right): Danny, Brennah, Jackson, Carson, and baby Andan

Our History

DVO Enterprises is a family software company located in Alpine, UT. The company's products are distributed through traditional retail channels and over the Internet.

DVO Enterprises was founded in a spare bedroom by software developer Daniel V. Oaks Jr. in March of 1992. As a student at Brigham Young University with one computer, little capital, and no connections, Dan set out with the goal of creating quality software products to strengthen families.

While studying at school and working at IBM, Dan developed The Food Planner, to help families plan their food storage. For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, storing a year supply of food is a challenge. The Food Planner made the difficult task of planning and using a food storage easy.

Despite good sales in the region, the limitations of the food storage market soon became apparent and a change was required. Dan discovered that many of his customers were using his software on a weekly basis to store recipes, plan menus, and make grocery shopping lists so he made that his focus. The name Cook'n came to him in the bathroom one day while wondering at the catchy name Intuit chose for its financial planning software, Quicken.

Notwithstanding new direction and an excellent product, Dan struggled to get national distribution. With a degree in hand and a young family to support, it was difficult to hang in there: "...even my Mother cornered me one Christmas and told me to go get a job..."

Perseverance paid off a year later. In the fall of 1997, a courageous buyer at Sam's Club named Mark McKane decided to take a risk with a no-name software developer called DVO. Sam's was really "Cook'n" four months later, after selling 40,000 copies. By the end of the year, Cook'n was the 35th best-selling software product in the Personal Productivity category and DVO climbed to #20 out of all of the software developers.

After the success at Sam's Club, Dan could have lived rather comfortably for a time. But, much to his wife's dismay, he set his sights on a higher goal: to make Cook'n the best recipe software in America. Considering the fact that there were 26 different competitors in the cooking software category with names such as Better Homes & Gardens, Williams-Sonoma, and The Joy of Cooking, Dan had his work cut out for him. The effort required a greater investment than he ever expected: "...I thought my ship had come in but before I knew it I was borrowing money from my parents and friends just to survive."

Despite their deep pockets and well established names, Dan's competitors soon discovered that, in order to compete with Cook'n, they would have to make a significant investment to add new features to their software AND lower their price at the same time. One by one, the competition began exiting the category. Perseverance paid off in the spring of 2001 when Dan's last competitor, Sierra, withdrew their MasterCook line of products from the retail channel.

Dan formed strategic alliances with partners such as Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, and Taste of Home. And, with virtually no competition, Cook'n soon became the #1 best-selling recipe organizer in the world with over 1,000,000 copies sold.

Dan's next move was to establish a strong presence on the Internet. It has taken several years but his HomeCook'n Newsletter now has over 400,000 subscribers, DVO.com receives 10,000 unique visitors each day, and his newest project, the Cook'n Club, has nearly 1,000 members! Wowsa!

Dan has taken to the air waves and will be making his 2nd appearance on HSN (The Home Shopping Network) soon. He is working with cooking appliance manufacturers too and recently shipped 120,000 copies of Cook'n to T-FAL; they bundled this custom version of Cook'n with their Deep Fryers.

After all this, he still reads all of his own e-mail (somehow), enjoys camping and sledding with his kids, and performs many incredible charitable services, the details of which he did not want made public. Check back soon...to learn more about the next chapter of DVO and the fascinating Cook'n saga!

What We Believe