Amped up: PowerChord delivers hit after hit for clients

With its unique origin story and approach to e-commerce, the St. Pete tech company strikes a chord with multi-location brands and franchises. Can it manage rapid growth while maintaining its culture?

By Brian Hartz
| 6:00 a.m. February 15, 2019
| 0 Free Articles Remaining!

Mark Wemple. Lanny Tucker is the CEO of PowerChord, a rapidly growing St. Petersburg-based tech company.

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PowerChord Inc., a St. Petersburg digital marketing company, comes by its cool name honestly. Prior to having a go at entrepreneurship in 2001, founder Pat Schunk played guitar for classic rock icon Stevie Nicks and wrote music for Seven Witches, a New Jersey heavy metal band. He also contributed to the soundtrack of the 1991 "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie.

The firm's coolness added a level of competence in 2015 with CEO Lanny Tucker, who came to PowerChord from Celebration-based Channel Intelligence, acquired in 2013 by Google. Tucker, 69, broke into the tech sector with Hewlett Packard and in 2005 moved to Florida from California.

PowerChord’s genesis, Tucker says, stems from Schunk’s frustration with buying music equipment online in the early days of e-commerce. “The websites were disjointed and the product descriptions weren’t there. He said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’”