GoDaddy.com Business Profile
Written by Samuel Phineas Upham
Bob Parsons is a retired United States Marine Corps veteran who had once run a financial services company. He started “Parsons Technology, Inc.” to sell financial software, then sold to Intuit for several million dollars. This was during the height of 1990s, which made Parsons a very wealthy man.
He was considering an early retirement when he got the idea to launch Jomax Technologies, a Web hosting/Web development company. He named the company after Jomax road, which was a dirt path he drove by to get to work each morning. He found some moderate success during the height of the dotcom boom, when just about any company with an idea was finding funds to do business online.
What Parsons knew without a doubt was that Jomax wasn’t a memorable name for anyone but himself. So he held a brainstorming session with employees to change the name. They considered “Big Daddy,” but the domain was already taken. So they shopped for more domains that resembled Big Daddy and eventually settled on GoDaddy. Parsons said the name had appeal because it made people smile, and helped with memory retention.
When Network Solutions ceased to be the de facto administrator of domain names, GoDaddy quickly seized the opportunity to begin registration. By 2005, GoDaddy was the largest supplier of ICANN accredited domain names.
GoDaddy is well-known for its marketing, which is described by Parson’s as “fun, edgy and a bit inappropriate.” Parsons is no longer CEO of GoDaddy, having stepped down in 2012, but he still remains a part of GoDaddy’s board of executives.
Samuel Phineas Upham is an investor from NYC and SF. You may contact Samuel Phineas Upham on his Samuel Phineas Upham website