6 ms·

Go Daddy to Sell Itself to K.K.R. and Silver Lake

32 points by davewiner 15y ago

Groxx 15y ago
>But the company’s most outspoken champion is its founder and chief executive, Robert Parsons. He will remain with the company... I'm guessing this means the ad campaigns will continue as before? Damn. I was hoping (for a few seconds) that this might clean things up a bit.
- hristov 15y ago
  Don't worry. I am sure he will suddenly have to leave the company the day before his stock options vest.
  - ghshephard 15y ago
    It won't help to wait until they do vest.
localhost3000 15y ago
goes to show you don't have to make a product people like, think is "cool", or even one that your peers respect to be wildly successful. Just make it useful and sell sell sell.
redsymbol 15y ago
Congratulations to Bob Parsons. For those of you who don't know, he started as a relatively scrappy entrepreneur; glad to see what appears to be a great outcome for him here. If you're the founder of a startup, this is worth a few minutes of your time to read: http://www.bobparsons.me/bp_16_rules.php?ci=21428 http://www.bobparsons.me/bp_16_rules.php?ci=21428
- jmjerlecki 15y ago
  That list was actually not a bad read. I did love that he was selling a print of it. That seems like something that is very Godaddyish. Also, "We aren't here for a long time, but we are here for a good time" has been one of my favorite quotes for awhile. Always makes me laugh.
m0nastic 15y ago
I feel like there's some sort of universal karma at work. A merger of companies that deserve each other.
- reneherse 15y ago
  And strategic partnerships, too, with Facebook rolling out a Skype-based product next week ;)
philco 15y ago
....annddd tomorrow GoDaddy will announce that 50% of its employees are leaving in fear of a Silver Lake employee option pool repeat
- Joakal 15y ago
  GoDaddy responds: "Well, looks like you won't be getting your options vested then!"
hop 15y ago
I would pay a lot of money for an app that could easily export all my domains and their setting out of godaddy to another registrar/host.
- dot 15y ago
  You don't really need an app for that. I transfered all our domains away from GD and it's actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it. The settings (mostly just nameservers) transfered automatically.
gallerytungsten 15y ago
I wonder if all the Go Daddy employees with stock are fully vested; or maybe this will be Skype vs. Silver Lake, Round II.
c2 15y ago
To answer questions about stock - most employees won't care. As far as I know - the last time they were planning to go public only the senior executives were issued any options/stock grants. There was no standard practice of issuing stock to 'regular' engineers. Congrats to Bob Parsons, GoDaddy is pretty much the poster boy for bootstrapping (although Bob was already quite wealthy from a previous business). Apparently many people don't agree with how he ran the business and you are free to have your opinion, but I think most of the controversy at the end of the day was isolated to a few legally pressured decisions (regarding shutting down web sites, such as rate a cop) and a few bad apple executives (buying/selling domains at their own auctions). On the whole, I've been a happy Go Daddy customer for 10 years now and haven't had a single issue.
- mtogo 15y ago
  Ah yes, godaddy's few, small, and easy to overlook issues such as * Unusable interface * Overpriced domains (overpriced everything, actually) * Questionable spam practices such as calling you at all hours of the day and spamming your email desperately trying to get you to buy more godaddy products * More ads than content on shopping cart and product pages * Pages with huge "CONTINUE (and add $29.99/mo email+superAWESOMETASTIC email hosting to cart)" and tiny "Continue without adding to cart" links * Support that makes Comcast look fantastic. * Low quality products overall. Find me one serious developer that would use godaddy's shared or VPS hosting services. * Random censorship of it's customer's web sites hosted there * Alleged theft of domains[0] * Killing of elephants Godaddy tricks people who don't know better into using their products, then makes an impossible maze of an interface to discourage leaving. Godaddy is like a shameless salesman that will do anything to get you to just buy one more $19.99 something or other. If you model your business after that, best of luck to you, but i won't be a customer any time soon. [0] I'm not sure if there was ever conclusive proof of this, but it sure looked suspicious. Grain of salt.
  - not_chriscohoat 15y ago
    The ads and interface have always been a pain, yes. But I wouldn't call their domains overpriced...I've used coupon codes from RetailMeNot and other sites for years and have gotten domains for 7.99/yr (at most). And that's renewals and new domains. I'd say I'm not the typical GoDaddy customer, with about 8-10 annual domains from coupons...but I'm not dissatisfied.

32 points by davewiner 15y ago

Groxx 15y ago

>But the company’s most outspoken champion is its founder and chief executive, Robert Parsons. He will remain with the company... I'm guessing this means the ad campaigns will continue as before? Damn. I was hoping (for a few seconds) that this might clean things up a bit.

hristov 15y ago
Don't worry. I am sure he will suddenly have to leave the company the day before his stock options vest.
- ghshephard 15y ago
  It won't help to wait until they do vest.

localhost3000 15y ago

goes to show you don't have to make a product people like, think is "cool", or even one that your peers respect to be wildly successful. Just make it useful and sell sell sell.

redsymbol 15y ago

Congratulations to Bob Parsons. For those of you who don't know, he started as a relatively scrappy entrepreneur; glad to see what appears to be a great outcome for him here. If you're the founder of a startup, this is worth a few minutes of your time to read: http://www.bobparsons.me/bp_16_rules.php?ci=21428 http://www.bobparsons.me/bp_16_rules.php?ci=21428

jmjerlecki 15y ago
That list was actually not a bad read. I did love that he was selling a print of it. That seems like something that is very Godaddyish. Also, "We aren't here for a long time, but we are here for a good time" has been one of my favorite quotes for awhile. Always makes me laugh.

m0nastic 15y ago

I feel like there's some sort of universal karma at work. A merger of companies that deserve each other.

reneherse 15y ago
And strategic partnerships, too, with Facebook rolling out a Skype-based product next week ;)

philco 15y ago

....annddd tomorrow GoDaddy will announce that 50% of its employees are leaving in fear of a Silver Lake employee option pool repeat

Joakal 15y ago
GoDaddy responds: "Well, looks like you won't be getting your options vested then!"

hop 15y ago

I would pay a lot of money for an app that could easily export all my domains and their setting out of godaddy to another registrar/host.

dot 15y ago
You don't really need an app for that. I transfered all our domains away from GD and it's actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it. The settings (mostly just nameservers) transfered automatically.

gallerytungsten 15y ago

I wonder if all the Go Daddy employees with stock are fully vested; or maybe this will be Skype vs. Silver Lake, Round II.

c2 15y ago

To answer questions about stock - most employees won't care. As far as I know - the last time they were planning to go public only the senior executives were issued any options/stock grants. There was no standard practice of issuing stock to 'regular' engineers. Congrats to Bob Parsons, GoDaddy is pretty much the poster boy for bootstrapping (although Bob was already quite wealthy from a previous business). Apparently many people don't agree with how he ran the business and you are free to have your opinion, but I think most of the controversy at the end of the day was isolated to a few legally pressured decisions (regarding shutting down web sites, such as rate a cop) and a few bad apple executives (buying/selling domains at their own auctions). On the whole, I've been a happy Go Daddy customer for 10 years now and haven't had a single issue.

mtogo 15y ago
Ah yes, godaddy's few, small, and easy to overlook issues such as * Unusable interface * Overpriced domains (overpriced everything, actually) * Questionable spam practices such as calling you at all hours of the day and spamming your email desperately trying to get you to buy more godaddy products * More ads than content on shopping cart and product pages * Pages with huge "CONTINUE (and add $29.99/mo email+superAWESOMETASTIC email hosting to cart)" and tiny "Continue without adding to cart" links * Support that makes Comcast look fantastic. * Low quality products overall. Find me one serious developer that would use godaddy's shared or VPS hosting services. * Random censorship of it's customer's web sites hosted there * Alleged theft of domains[0] * Killing of elephants Godaddy tricks people who don't know better into using their products, then makes an impossible maze of an interface to discourage leaving. Godaddy is like a shameless salesman that will do anything to get you to just buy one more $19.99 something or other. If you model your business after that, best of luck to you, but i won't be a customer any time soon. [0] I'm not sure if there was ever conclusive proof of this, but it sure looked suspicious. Grain of salt.
- not_chriscohoat 15y ago
  The ads and interface have always been a pain, yes. But I wouldn't call their domains overpriced...I've used coupon codes from RetailMeNot and other sites for years and have gotten domains for 7.99/yr (at most). And that's renewals and new domains. I'd say I'm not the typical GoDaddy customer, with about 8-10 annual domains from coupons...but I'm not dissatisfied.