Longtime Go Daddy customer now at its helm.
This morning I talked with Blake Irving, who was just named Chief Executive Officer of Go Daddy, about why he chose to join the company.
It turns out Irving is no stranger to the domain registration and web hosting giant.
“I’ve been a Go Daddy customer for five years,” he said.
“I host 45 domains with them, and I’ve been a fan of the company since I acquired my first domain.”
Irving said he’s also helped friends and family get online by registering domains at Go Daddy.
And yes, Irving owns the domain BlakeIrving.com.
Irving was most recently Chief Product Officer at Yahoo. He sees a lot of similarities between what he did there and what Go Daddy’s mission is.
“At a high level, Go Daddy is a platform for small businesses with a series of products on top of the platform,” he said. “You can view Yahoo in the same way. It is a platform for media consumption and communications.”
Irving also has experience expanding in a global marketplace, which is one of Go Daddy’s main goals right now.
Go Daddy Interim CEO Scott Wagner told me that Irving is the perfect fit for the company.
“He’s an individual that will absolutely fit with the Go Daddy culture,” said Wagner. “He’s incredibly passionate with a hard charging work ethic and a bend-over-backwards to get it done ethos.”
Prior to Wagner taking the interim CEO role, Go Daddy was led by Warren Adelman. Adelman had many years of experience in the domain industry at Go Daddy. It will be interesting to see what Irving’s outside perspective brings to the company that manages more domain names than any other company.
Dave Zan says
One thing I’d like to see: his reaching out to customers with legitimate beefs similar to what PayPal’s semi-new CEO is doing.
Jon Hile says
I think he would welcome it Dave. Mr. Irving has a reputation as a stand-up guy.