
GoDaddy CoFounder: Never give up (but be very quick to change). - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.bobparsons.me/SuccesskeyNevergiveupbutbeveryquicktochangeTurning15000into64millionKissing64milliongoodbye.html
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ryanwaggoner
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?

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burke
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
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.

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staunch
> _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.

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fallentimes
> _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?"

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azharcs
_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
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.

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elviejo
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
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.

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

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

~~~
sqs
Why?

~~~
snorkel
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
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).

~~~
tdupree
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
Compared to the others, my experience with GoDaddy has been good, but
unfortunately that says more about the competition than them.

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rob
That is quite the URL.

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

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moder
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
Never quit. Maybe change.

~~~
peregrine
Never quit changing.

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earl
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
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.

