5 ms·

GoDaddy CoFounder: Never give up (but be very quick to change).

81 points by jasonlbaptiste 18y ago

dmix 18y ago
The structure and design of that article reminded me why I strongly dislike GoDaddy.
- sqs 18y ago
  Why?
  - snorkel 18y ago
    Because they add 50 parked subdomains to every domain you register? Because they spam you mercilessly to renew your domains every week? Because to make a simple DNS change you have to wander through 10 pages cluttered with cross promotional links? After using GoDaddy I feel like I need a bath and a full virus scan.
    - fallentimes 18y ago
      Agreed, and the upsetting part is there's nothing really better out there. The market is wide open for someone to do it right (ICANN red tape aside).
      - kragen 18y ago
        I use GANDI and I've never had any problems like those. The fact that GoDaddy is permitted to register domains demonstrates that ICANN has failed.
        sam_in_nyc 18y ago
        You're completely right... ICANN is the true source of this problem. They have a responsibility which they ignore. Instead, they essentially print money by issuing new TLD's and handing out trials of domains for free. I hate ICANN so fucking much. I've been saying that there should be some other DNS system that's decided on by users. That is, flip FireFox from "default DNS" to "newDNS" and now "googel.com" goes to "google.com", because that's what the majority of people have suggested it go to, not because Google had to register this to protect from typo squatters. It would never be the case that "googel.com" goes to some squattors "what you want when you want it" bullshit page, because users wouldn't stand for that. It would get voted off the DNS system. This system would of course use the proper ICANN DNS to resolve the main sites like "Google.com." So, now we have the situation where if you want a domain, go ahead and register fajsdf90234890342.com with ICANN, then suggest to newDNS that "mydomain.com" goes to "fajsdf90234890342.com". As users see that it's legit, it gets set. If it's obvious parked domain BS, then you lose it. Finally, this system could be implemented today, because it's backward compatible. Unless otherwise noted, a newDNS entry goes to whatever the ICANN entry is. If users flag it down, then it gets erased. If users flag their own redirection, it gets updated. This would be beautiful.
        ericb 18y ago
        Sounds like something easily gamed.
        sam_in_nyc 18y ago
        In that case, it'd be no worse than the current system.
        palish 18y ago
        That isn't a strong endorsement.
        sam_in_nyc 18y ago
        It looks like OpenDNS.com does something very similar to this. You use them as your DNS gateway, and they claim to provide faster, safer, and (if requested) censored results. It doesn't appear that they have a user generate database of domains, though.
        kragen 18y ago
        We already have something like this --- Google Search. See http://www.google.com/search?q=googel http://www.google.com/search?q=googel etc.
      - tdupree 18y ago
        Yeah my experience with GoDaddy was terrible too. I switched to 1and1 about 4 years ago. I have been very happy with its domain handling. I don't always use them for hosting, but I haven't found anyone better for domains.
        fallentimes 18y ago
        Compared to the others, my experience with GoDaddy has been good, but unfortunately that says more about the competition than them.
        madh 18y ago
        1and1 is great. I use them too.
      - sam_in_nyc 18y ago
        namecheap.com
rob 18y ago
That is quite the URL.
staunch 18y ago
> I would dream that one day my company would have full page ads right along side the other big players. I think that explains his desire to run Superbowl ads more than anything.
gcheong 18y ago
Another great Winston Churchill quote: "If you are going through hell, keep going."
fallentimes 18y ago
>People who are not risk takers (this pretty much includes over 95% of the population) cannot fathom taking a chance to make a business work, and not having it immediately take off. They especially cannot understand being involved in something that fails repeatedly, and instead of giving up, trying to make it work (while risking all of one’s financial worth) again and again. I think something like this happens to a lot of people who do startups: "Why on earth are you leaving a 50-100k job per year, with benefits, to do a startup?"
azharcs 18y ago
I printed out labels for all those names, and my entire family (myself, wife, and three children) put labels on the envelopes, licked stamps (I sent them all first class —- at that time I didn’t know about bulk mail) folded the brochures, put them in the envelopes, and licked them shut. I licked so many envelopes and had so much glue on my tongue, that I don’t think I talked normally for at least two days. Bob Parson seems to have to made many honest mistakes and learned from them. One of the thing i liked about him was Persistence, he kept trying and trying until he succeeded. A true entrepreneur.
- tdavis 18y ago
  You know, I was listening to what Bob Parsons had to say back when this was actually posted, and he's a pretty sharp guy. And in complete contradiction to the GoDaddy site, he is a really no-BS type of person, at least that's what I gathered from his early podcasts.
ryanwaggoner 18y ago
Aside from the primary message of this post, which is a good one, something else fascinates me: almost everyone I know hates Godaddy. But Bob Parsons seems to think that he's created a great company with strong values, full of brilliant engineers, known for having great customer service. None of those things are things that I've ever heard anyone say about Godaddy. So why the discrepancy? Here's a few possibilities: 1. My sample is not representative, and many people do feel great about Godaddy. 2. Bob Parsons knows that Godaddy sucks, but he's a salesman and he's selling the brand as he'd like it to be. 3. Bob Parsons actually thinks that Godaddy is an amazing company and a strong brand. Which is it?
- patio11 18y ago
  almost everyone I know hates Godaddy Pleased to make your acquaintance. You now know at least one person who does not hate GoDaddy. I buy domain names there. They are cheap and have never treated me poorly. I used to buy hosting there. They were cheap and never treated me poorly (and I'd still be there if I didn't catch Rails fever, which means $4 a month Linux hosting is a bit beneath my needs these days).
- burke 18y ago
  I've never been particularly unimpressed with GoDaddy, other than the abysmal site design and inescapable attempts to sucker you into extra "features" with each domain purchase. Their support seems decent, and their prices _are_ very low.
  - apsurd 18y ago
    I agree exactly. I truly DISLIKE Godaddy because their site is a huge mess - yet I still buy my domains from them. Its simple, cheap, and they have full dns control. That's all I need.
  - TY 18y ago
    GoDaddy has the most horrible and confusing site design that causes me to waste a lot of time doing something as simple as trying to lookup which hosting plan I'm on. However, I'm still a customer for all of my .ca (Canada) sites and hosting for my girlfriend's business because: 1. Prices are very cheap 2. They are the most credible and inexpensive .ca domain registrar that I've found 3. Customer service is decent For my own startup it's AWS all the way...
elviejo 18y ago
So he is a millionaire, but lost his wife that according to himself was fundamental on his success. That is pyrrhic victory to me.
- fallentimes 18y ago
  I don't know, just because you work well together doesn't mean you should be married. The fact that he's saying nice things about her makes me think the opposite.
- 10ren 18y ago
  It's only pyrrhic if his victory caused the loss of his wife, which isn't apparent from the story. It is however sad. I think many people dull the sadness of loss with sour grapes. He has not. Respect.
moder 18y ago
So, you're chugging along but don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Are you supposed to keep chugging (don't quit!) or "be very quick to change"? Hm.
- sam_in_nyc 18y ago
  Never quit. Maybe change.
  - peregrine 18y ago
    Never quit changing.
earl 18y ago
Hmm... when I read stuff like this, I never can tell if these are good ideas / lessons or not. There is such an immense survivorship bias -- only successful people write this stuff, we never hear from the unsuccessful people that did the exact same thing -- in writeups like these that I doubt there is any real value. You can't say if these practices helped, hindered, or did nothing... particularly when massive business success is at least in part due to luck. That's what you get for trying to interpret a conditional probability.
- gcheong 18y ago
  I think all we can say for certain is that if you give up you are guaranteed to fail. Not giving up is only a prerequisite for success, not a guarantee and anyone who is at the stage of having not yet given up but also hasn't hit the right success combination yet is just an unknown until either they give up (by either choice or circumstance) or they succeed.
wallflower 18y ago
"When you love something, it tells you all its secrets."

dmix 18y ago

The structure and design of that article reminded me why I strongly dislike GoDaddy.

sqs 18y ago
Why?
- snorkel 18y ago
  Because they add 50 parked subdomains to every domain you register? Because they spam you mercilessly to renew your domains every week? Because to make a simple DNS change you have to wander through 10 pages cluttered with cross promotional links? After using GoDaddy I feel like I need a bath and a full virus scan.
  - fallentimes 18y ago
    Agreed, and the upsetting part is there's nothing really better out there. The market is wide open for someone to do it right (ICANN red tape aside).
    - kragen 18y ago
      I use GANDI and I've never had any problems like those. The fact that GoDaddy is permitted to register domains demonstrates that ICANN has failed.
      - sam_in_nyc 18y ago
        You're completely right... ICANN is the true source of this problem. They have a responsibility which they ignore. Instead, they essentially print money by issuing new TLD's and handing out trials of domains for free. I hate ICANN so fucking much. I've been saying that there should be some other DNS system that's decided on by users. That is, flip FireFox from "default DNS" to "newDNS" and now "googel.com" goes to "google.com", because that's what the majority of people have suggested it go to, not because Google had to register this to protect from typo squatters. It would never be the case that "googel.com" goes to some squattors "what you want when you want it" bullshit page, because users wouldn't stand for that. It would get voted off the DNS system. This system would of course use the proper ICANN DNS to resolve the main sites like "Google.com." So, now we have the situation where if you want a domain, go ahead and register fajsdf90234890342.com with ICANN, then suggest to newDNS that "mydomain.com" goes to "fajsdf90234890342.com". As users see that it's legit, it gets set. If it's obvious parked domain BS, then you lose it. Finally, this system could be implemented today, because it's backward compatible. Unless otherwise noted, a newDNS entry goes to whatever the ICANN entry is. If users flag it down, then it gets erased. If users flag their own redirection, it gets updated. This would be beautiful.
        ericb 18y ago
        Sounds like something easily gamed.
        sam_in_nyc 18y ago
        In that case, it'd be no worse than the current system.
        palish 18y ago
        That isn't a strong endorsement.
        sam_in_nyc 18y ago
        It looks like OpenDNS.com does something very similar to this. You use them as your DNS gateway, and they claim to provide faster, safer, and (if requested) censored results. It doesn't appear that they have a user generate database of domains, though.
        kragen 18y ago
        We already have something like this --- Google Search. See http://www.google.com/search?q=googel http://www.google.com/search?q=googel etc.
    - tdupree 18y ago
      Yeah my experience with GoDaddy was terrible too. I switched to 1and1 about 4 years ago. I have been very happy with its domain handling. I don't always use them for hosting, but I haven't found anyone better for domains.
      - fallentimes 18y ago
        Compared to the others, my experience with GoDaddy has been good, but unfortunately that says more about the competition than them.
      - madh 18y ago
        1and1 is great. I use them too.
    - sam_in_nyc 18y ago
      namecheap.com

rob 18y ago

That is quite the URL.

staunch 18y ago

> I would dream that one day my company would have full page ads right along side the other big players. I think that explains his desire to run Superbowl ads more than anything.

gcheong 18y ago

Another great Winston Churchill quote: "If you are going through hell, keep going."

fallentimes 18y ago

>People who are not risk takers (this pretty much includes over 95% of the population) cannot fathom taking a chance to make a business work, and not having it immediately take off. They especially cannot understand being involved in something that fails repeatedly, and instead of giving up, trying to make it work (while risking all of one’s financial worth) again and again. I think something like this happens to a lot of people who do startups: "Why on earth are you leaving a 50-100k job per year, with benefits, to do a startup?"

azharcs 18y ago

I printed out labels for all those names, and my entire family (myself, wife, and three children) put labels on the envelopes, licked stamps (I sent them all first class —- at that time I didn’t know about bulk mail) folded the brochures, put them in the envelopes, and licked them shut. I licked so many envelopes and had so much glue on my tongue, that I don’t think I talked normally for at least two days. Bob Parson seems to have to made many honest mistakes and learned from them. One of the thing i liked about him was Persistence, he kept trying and trying until he succeeded. A true entrepreneur.

tdavis 18y ago
You know, I was listening to what Bob Parsons had to say back when this was actually posted, and he's a pretty sharp guy. And in complete contradiction to the GoDaddy site, he is a really no-BS type of person, at least that's what I gathered from his early podcasts.

ryanwaggoner 18y ago

Aside from the primary message of this post, which is a good one, something else fascinates me: almost everyone I know hates Godaddy. But Bob Parsons seems to think that he's created a great company with strong values, full of brilliant engineers, known for having great customer service. None of those things are things that I've ever heard anyone say about Godaddy. So why the discrepancy? Here's a few possibilities: 1. My sample is not representative, and many people do feel great about Godaddy. 2. Bob Parsons knows that Godaddy sucks, but he's a salesman and he's selling the brand as he'd like it to be. 3. Bob Parsons actually thinks that Godaddy is an amazing company and a strong brand. Which is it?

patio11 18y ago
almost everyone I know hates Godaddy Pleased to make your acquaintance. You now know at least one person who does not hate GoDaddy. I buy domain names there. They are cheap and have never treated me poorly. I used to buy hosting there. They were cheap and never treated me poorly (and I'd still be there if I didn't catch Rails fever, which means $4 a month Linux hosting is a bit beneath my needs these days).
burke 18y ago
I've never been particularly unimpressed with GoDaddy, other than the abysmal site design and inescapable attempts to sucker you into extra "features" with each domain purchase. Their support seems decent, and their prices _are_ very low.
- apsurd 18y ago
  I agree exactly. I truly DISLIKE Godaddy because their site is a huge mess - yet I still buy my domains from them. Its simple, cheap, and they have full dns control. That's all I need.
- TY 18y ago
  GoDaddy has the most horrible and confusing site design that causes me to waste a lot of time doing something as simple as trying to lookup which hosting plan I'm on. However, I'm still a customer for all of my .ca (Canada) sites and hosting for my girlfriend's business because: 1. Prices are very cheap 2. They are the most credible and inexpensive .ca domain registrar that I've found 3. Customer service is decent For my own startup it's AWS all the way...

elviejo 18y ago

So he is a millionaire, but lost his wife that according to himself was fundamental on his success. That is pyrrhic victory to me.

fallentimes 18y ago
I don't know, just because you work well together doesn't mean you should be married. The fact that he's saying nice things about her makes me think the opposite.
10ren 18y ago
It's only pyrrhic if his victory caused the loss of his wife, which isn't apparent from the story. It is however sad. I think many people dull the sadness of loss with sour grapes. He has not. Respect.

moder 18y ago

So, you're chugging along but don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Are you supposed to keep chugging (don't quit!) or "be very quick to change"? Hm.

sam_in_nyc 18y ago
Never quit. Maybe change.
- peregrine 18y ago
  Never quit changing.

earl 18y ago

Hmm... when I read stuff like this, I never can tell if these are good ideas / lessons or not. There is such an immense survivorship bias -- only successful people write this stuff, we never hear from the unsuccessful people that did the exact same thing -- in writeups like these that I doubt there is any real value. You can't say if these practices helped, hindered, or did nothing... particularly when massive business success is at least in part due to luck. That's what you get for trying to interpret a conditional probability.

gcheong 18y ago
I think all we can say for certain is that if you give up you are guaranteed to fail. Not giving up is only a prerequisite for success, not a guarantee and anyone who is at the stage of having not yet given up but also hasn't hit the right success combination yet is just an unknown until either they give up (by either choice or circumstance) or they succeed.

wallflower 18y ago

"When you love something, it tells you all its secrets."