GoDaddy.com is a online domain registrar and hosting company, which has grown to rival such mega companies as Network Solutions!  What started out as a small start-up has since grown over the past decade into the largest domain registration company in the world with profits to match!  This week in the spotlight we take a look at serial entrepreneur Bob Parsons who created Godaddy.com. We’ll look at just how he did it and highlight what lessons can be learned for any upcoming entrepreneur.

Summary:

Name: Bob Parsons
Age: 59
Location: Arizona
Claim to fame: GoDaddy.com (domain registrar and hosing company)
Initial cost: < $10,000 (estimate)

How He Did It:

Bob Parsons grew up in Maryland and later joined the US Marines right out of high school.  He graduated from the Universality of Baltimore with a degree in Accounting when he was 25, which is when he would begin his career as a self taught software developer for the next several years.  Parsons started his first business in 1984 when he was 34 called Parsons Technology where he was selling self developed accounting software.  Parsons grew the company to a 1000+ employees over the next 10 years and would go onto sell Parsons Technology for about $64 million in 1994.  Parsons then went onto start a domain registration and internet hosting company called GoDaddy.com, which launched in 1997.  It has since seen rapid growth and development in its services over the past decade.  This combined with a edgy ongoing marketing campaign (i.e “Hot Blondes GoDaddy Ads”) has taken the company to revenue in the $100′s of millions.   Today GoDaddy is the largest domain registar company in the world with over 36 million registered domains!

Lessons Learned:

• Take action. Take action. Take action! (One of the main reasons Bob Parsons succeeded was because he took actions on his ideas as an entrepreneur.  Too often people stop short of acting on a great idea because of fears such as failure for one example.)
• Start small and grow accordingly (Parsons developed his own software and sold it out of his basement growing slowly, but surely over time)
• Never be satisfied – continue to take your idea to the next level (As an entrepreneur, Parsons continued to improve his accounting software and later expand his GoDaddy business to build them both into the successes that they were.)
• It’s never too late to become an entrepreneur (Parsons worked a regular 9-5 job as a software developer for many years before transitioning to running his own business full time)
• Keep your audience or customer at the forefront of your decision making.

Did you miss last weeks spotlight? Check it out here: The Entrepreneur Spotlight: Josh Kopelman of Half.com


Be on the lookout for our next entrepreneur spotlight article in this ongoing series. In the meantime, be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think about the success of this week’s entrepreneur. Also, please let me know if you have an entrepreneur you would like to see featured here in the weeks to come.


Sources:

• Former Marine, GoDaddy CEO Talks About His Rise to Success
• Rags to Riches: Bob Parsons, Founder of GoDaddy.com
• GoDaddy Name
• RegistrarStats
• Bob Parsons Blog