Blake Irving

“Our vision is to radically shift the global economy toward small business by making it very easy for people to easily start and confidently grow and successfully run their ventures.” ~Blake Irving

It’s “Go Time” for GoDaddy CEO and Board Director Blake Irving who’s on a mission to help small businesses. Irving’s vision for GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name provider and web host, is to provide a comprehensive package of software and services for businesses that would like to start up and run a company online.

How can GoDaddy measure their success?

“We will know we were successful ten years from now if the world’s GDP disproportionately grows small business versus the rest of the planet,” explained Irving in an interview with AZTechBeat. He says the company aims to do so well that other companies recognize this segment.

The company launched Get Found, a tool that helps small businesses manage their online profiles across major search engines and social sites. Locu, a startup acquired by GoDaddy in 2013, created the tool.

Prior to GoDaddy, Irving served as EVP and Chief Product Officer at Yahoo!, where he rolled out the first unified product vision and strategy for the company. He expanded monthly users to nearly one billion, launched 180 new Yahoo! websites worldwide and rolled out products in 23 languages and 30 new markets.

Irving also spent 15 years at Microsoft, where he created world-changing consumer products like NetMeeting, MSN Messenger, and grew Hotmail to the largest mail service in the world. He started his career in 1981 at Xerox and Compaq and has been a professor at Pepperdine’s School of Business. He’s made appearances at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech Conference and CES. Irving earned his M.B.A. from Pepperdine University and a B.A. from San Diego State University.