Service CEO, Michael, chats with GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving on gender equality, what it’s like to be at the helm of a public company, information security, and more. You can check it out in audio here: http://bit.ly/2bxEZfi. As always, the episode is available for download in iTunes as well, and we’ve included a full transcript below.
In this episode, we’ll discuss:
0:43 How does someone with a background in fine arts wind up being a leader in the tech industry?
2:51 Do you think there’s a connection between effective leadership and the fine arts?
5:42 You were in semi-retirement before GoDaddy. What was it about the company that got you back in the game?
11:36 Why Scottsdale? What’s the tech scene like there, and have you ever felt pressure to move to Silicon Valley?
14:53 Do you feel GoDaddy’s overtly sexual ads were a necessary evil? What did they do for the company?
17:38 Where did the name GoDaddy come from?
18:49 What’s your relationship like with Bob Parsons, who originally founded GoDaddy?
19:57 What’s it like being a public company CEO? What are the most surprising things about it?
22:30 What drives the incredibly high level of customer loyalty at GoDaddy? How do you get people to fall in love with a brand rather than just know about it?
24:54 Why Blake thinks of customer service as GoDaddy’s secret weapon.
29:47 Let’s talk about SOPA. Do you think there’s ever a case where it makes sense for a tech company to cooperate with a government agency if it conflicts with user privacy? How important is privacy to you?
31:49 How important is your open door policy to the success of GoDaddy? How do you go out of your way to make yourself accessible to employees at all levels?
34:53 Why is the fight for equal pay for women important to you? Why don’t other public company CEOs take a stand for it?
39:49 Where do bots fit in the future of GoDaddy’s customer service?
41:46 What do you think about social as the new medium for customer service? Do you use any bots that have impressed you in your day to day life?
44:32 What does it mean to be semi-retired? What were you doing during your hiatus?
46:24 Do you think you’ll ever fully retire?
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(Voiceover) Please hold the line. We will answer your call as soon as possible. Michael: I’m Michael Schneider, founder
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and CEO of Service.
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This is another edition of Please Hold.
Today I have a very special guest, Mr. Blake
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Irving, who is the CEO of GoDaddy, a
little registrar and provider of small
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business tools you may have heard of, and
Blake, I want to welcome you to the show. Thanks for being here.
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Blake: Thanks, Mike. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I like that background, that
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brick background on you. Michael: I’m based in
LA, and we have a lot of earthquakes, so
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we like authentic brick in my neck of the woods.
Blake: I hope it’s been seismically retrofitted.
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Michael: It hasn’t at all, it’s a super old building, but
let’s hope there’s not an earthquake during
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this call.
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Blake: Awesome. Michael: So I want to jump right in with your history, and it’s very
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telling that there’s a drum set right
behind you.
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I read that your undergrad degree is
in fine art, and you were a drummer in college.
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Sort of like a drummer for hire,
maybe not a consistent band?
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And so I’m just curious what a
drummer and a fine art major is doing at
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the helm of one of the world’s most
important technology companies.
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Blake: Well, yeah, it’s interesting- I think
a lot of it has to do with what i found
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interesting as I was growing up, both in
studying art, and I was, truth be told,
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I was a graphic artist and a typographer.
So I was studying type, and what happened
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was, I had company, Xerox, who was very, very
early in computers and digital
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printing and digital typography, did a
portfolio review in one of the
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classes I was in and asked if I’d come in and
interview with them. This is ‘81, so long time
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ago, you know this is… Michael: Is this before or
after the Steve Jobs Xerox PARC, that
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whole thing? Blake: This is just around the same
time, a little before it, so that happened
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in like the mid ’80s. ’81 was a little
earlier than that, and so I went
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down to interview with them, and they put
me behind me on this thing called an
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Alto computer, which was a full
WYSIWYG workstation, 512k removable—
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10 megabyte
removable hard drive, 512K of RAM on this
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thing, attached to the ARPANET, laser
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printer 300 feet from your office, I
mean it was full automation and a lot of
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really bright guys doing some pretty
interesting things and I fell in love
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I just fell in love with doing that. Now
all the while I was doing that, I found, you
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know, I was a jazz musician growing up,
and found that to be an incredibly
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creative outlet for me, and I kept doing
that on weekends, and as you said, I was
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doing a lot of studio stuff. I didn’t
dedicate to one band, I played in a
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whole bunch of different kinds and was a
pretty reasonable sight reader, so when a
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band came into town, they needed somebody
to play their gig, you know, I’d get a phone
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call and say, “Hey, show up. There’s
rehearsals at this time, shows at this
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time,” and I would do that and then
work full-time.
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Michael: So do you think there’s a connection
because a lot of CEOs, if you think about
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left brain and right brain, a lot of CEOs,
I would say, are very analytical and not
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necessarily musicians or artists or
painters, but do you think there’s a
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connection between effective leadership
and the fine arts?
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Blake: Uh, you know, I think there’s a couple
different ways to look at it. I think
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that, you know, left brain or right brain, I
think most of the folks that I’ve met that
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have been more eclectic
backgrounds like mine that find
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themselves in leadership roles access
both sides, so there’s an analytical side
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and a creative side, and I think most of
the folks, especially software developers
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that I’ve met throughout my career, have
been musicians and artists and
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incredibly analytical at the same time,
but fancy themselves linguists as well
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as analysts and have, you know, very sharp views
on problem solving and how to go about
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that, but also have the thought that the
way that you express yourself in code
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can be incredibly personal, and in fact,
you know, folks, lot of the programmers I was
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working with at Microsoft in the early
’90s, fancy themselves sort of artists
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because they believe what they did was a
pure expression of their thought, and
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that they were going to express it
differently than anybody else would. Less…
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some folks were the less characters, the
better, you know, my comments matter, it was
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quite interesting actually, so I
think that that an art that is
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accessing both sides.
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In music, and this is interesting, when
you’re a drummer, and I used to
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playing 22-piece big bands and a lot of
jazz bands, and you’re reading charts and
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whatnot, and if you – your job in life is to
support all the rest of the musicians in
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the band, making sure that you’re laying
down a beat, that you’re reading four bars ahead, and
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you’re setting them up for breaks, and
and you know vamps, and all kinds of
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things, and you know exactly where you
are, and you can lead ’em down the path while
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they’re soloing on top of you, and
working ensemble work on top of you, so
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you’re really sitting in the back of the
band where most drummers sit; at least that’s where we
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ought to be, and the rest of the band is
actually playing on top of you, and your
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job is just to basically lead them just by
laying down a solid foundation they can
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play the top of, and I think, if I think of
leadership, generally I think that’s what
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leaders are supposed to do. You know,
every once in a while you might get a–
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maybe you get a drum solo, or you trade
fours with somebody, but honestly, your
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job as a leader is to lay a foundation
for the rest of the business to go build
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on, and I have found that to be
true across my career.
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Michael: Yeah, that’s a great analogy. There’s very few solo performers that are
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successful, it’s always a team effort so…
Blake: Always. Michael: I like the analogy. So tell me how
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you got to GoDaddy. I read that you were
in semi-retirement, which I’m not clear
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the difference between retirement and
semi-retirement, but you had done
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well, you were at Microsoft in the early days,
then you were at Yahoo, and you were kind of kicking
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back a little bit, and something about
GoDaddy, I suspect, got you back into the
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game. What was it?
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Blake: I, you know… So I had Hunter send me a
document about the company. I know I was
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about to pull the trigger on another
role in Silicon Valley, more traditional
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Silicon Valley job, and had been a
customer of GoDaddy’s for the better part of five
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years, maybe seven years, and had 49
domains under management, I think, and
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had done some things on top, and just
secured intellectual property and others,
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and had experience with the company… Michael: Were you a domain shark? Were you like buying and reselling
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domains, or…? Blake: Oh no, I’d never resold one.
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I buy them because I have an idea, and
this, I represent the customer, this is why it was
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so interesting to me. I represent the
customer that we serve, which was, “I have
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an idea. I’m going to go reserve the
intellectual property on the idea,“ which usually a
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name.
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And I’m gonna get that name, and then I’m
gonna do something with it. And some people
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do, some people don’t, some people do it
once. A lot of guys that are in the
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technology business have quite a few
registered, because they’ve got a lot of
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ideas and want to reserve it. So I had done that
and had spent time talking with their
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customer care organization, which was
unlike any I’d ever spoken to in tech, they
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were just incredibly responsive, very
thoughtful and knowledgeable, and
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actually cared about what you’re doing. But I had seen the commercials
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too; I didn’t quite understand them, but I
knew that they were incredibly effective,
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and I’d been using the products for
awhile, knew that the products could be
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could be… could be better. And so I
went through this document that the guy sent
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me, after asking if I’d be interested, and I said, “You know, I don’t know if I’d be
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interested. It doesn’t seem like
necessarily a company that’s perfect
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for what I’ve done with my career.” He goes,
“Well, just let me send this document and show it.”
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And what I found in the document was this
incredible market, this huge market of
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people that have ideas just like me, a
billion-dollar company with great cash
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flow, with NPS in the mid-sixties, Net
Promoter Score in the mid-sixties, brand
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recognition up in the eighties, with very
low, you know customer turnover, 85% customer
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retention rate… All these things that
just kind of blew my mind because
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they
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were not something that I would think. I
didn’t think the size of the
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company was going to be that large, I
didn’t think their loyalty in the
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customer base was going to be that
incredible, and I didn’t know that the
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economics of the company were great.
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Now Mike, they had done all of that in
the United States, and then never left
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the country. And then so, you know, in
looking at it, I just started thinking, my
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gosh, what could this be in a decade?
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You know, how fast could you get it there,
and who would you bring along to go make
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it happen? And I thought oh my gosh,
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so if we built a superflat platform, did it
on top of OpenStack, did it in a way
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where everything was API, every product
and company was using the other services
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that were built in the company, nobody
was building, I’ll call it “vertically
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stacked”, vertically stacked non-interfaceable products with each other, but
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we’re actually building a flat platform
and then we localize it, globalize it
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and took it into, you know, every
market that made sense in the US, and
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then open technology centers in places
where the best technologists are, like
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what could we… what could this look like? I
started kind of thinking about it and
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got kind of excited, and then had some
conversations with the board, and,
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you know, told ’em what I thought I
would… you know, they asked me, “What you
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think you would want to do with the
company?” And I said this is what I… the
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opportunity I see, and what I think
we could probably do, and in fact, I’ve got a
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bunch of people that I think would be
really interested in doing just this. And
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then the comment, one of the comments from
the board members was, “Well, that’s good,
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because that’s kind of our investment
thesis. That’s what we think this could
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look like,” and so for the last… You know, I
ended up taking the job,
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contacted quite a few friends and folks
that work within the industry before doing
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so, and just kind of bounced the company
and what I have found off of them, and
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what I thought this place could be, and
they started getting excited, and so for
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the last three-and-a-half years, almost
four years now, we’ve been building out
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the platform, an OpenStack platform
that’s well API’ed, new econ stack, building
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out
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our localization, globalization, global
capabilities, opening offices where we
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need great technologists from and want to
have a presence in, and have done
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most of the things that, you know, we said
we were going to do. We’re not, you know, out…
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Frankly I have a bunch more I
want to do, but we are now in 56
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markets in 29 languages around the
world. We have offices in Seattle and
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Sunnyvale, in San Francisco and LA, and
Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as
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existing offices we have in Iowa, and in
Arizona, and have just been growing the
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company. We’ve been growing it fifteen percent
per year. We’ve gone public, which is another
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thing I wanted to get done.
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And so we’ve grown from about a
billion dollars, we’ll be around two
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billion, you know, I think, in bookings this year. So that’s pretty cool. Michael: That’s amazing progress. Blake: It’s been super fun
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and I’m tellin’ ya, great group of people
we have working here, we’re all pretty
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pumped about what we think the company
can be, and how we can, you know, help shift
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the global economy towards small
business by helping people
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get their ideas online. Michael: So the company is
headquartered in Scottsdale, is that
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right?
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Blake: It is. That’s right. That’s where i am right
now. Michael: Yeah, and I’m just curious, what’s the
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tech and startup scene like in
Scottsdale, and have you ever felt the
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need to potentially move the company to
Silicon Valley, which, by the way, is a
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question I get asked all the time being
a tech entrepreneur in LA and not being
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up north? Blake: Really? You know, it’s interesting
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the tech community in Phoenix is actually
pretty strong. There’s a lot of folks that are
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[00:12:02.26]
coming into Phoenix because the economics
of the area are easier than they
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are in the Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley,
you know, you’re in the LA
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area, so you know it’s quite different.
[00:12:14.24]
[00:12:14.24]
Silicon Valley is an incredibly expensive
place to hire people, and to some
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degree, and I’ve talked to other CEOs
about this and they express the same
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thing, to some degree, it’s, you know, it’s hard to find
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loyalty in the Valley, because I think
people tend to… I used to call it “they don’t own, they
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rent.” They go into a company for a
few years, have an experience, don’t have
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to move houses, don’t have to uproot their kids
from school, and then go work for somebody
[00:12:42.11]
[00:12:42.11]
else. And it’s a pretty rough place
to compete for talent, even though I love
[00:12:48.01]
[00:12:48.01]
having presence there, and know so many
people there, that it makes sense to be
[00:12:51.13]
[00:12:51.13]
there, and we’re happy there, but it’s
also quite a challenge, and so I
[00:12:57.23]
[00:12:57.23]
think for folks that are saying, “Hey,
you gotta move. Michael, move your company, you know,
[00:13:02.25]
[00:13:02.25]
you’d be better off in the Bay Area,” you
have, you know, the whole Santa Monica
[00:13:07.06]
[00:13:07.06]
area, there’s a lot of great talent, and
whether it’s Pasadena or Glendale or the
[00:13:12.17]
[00:13:12.17]
South Bay, there’s a lot of really good
people there who would rather stay there, you
[00:13:17.08]
[00:13:17.08]
know, and then the reason I’ve gone into
Silicon Valley, and Seattle, or LA, and San
[00:13:23.04]
[00:13:23.04]
Francisco, and Cambridge is because
people like it there. They want
[00:13:27.07]
[00:13:27.07]
to work on a quest that is noble,
and something that’s fun, with people who
[00:13:32.14]
[00:13:32.14]
are great to work with.
[00:13:33.20]
[00:13:33.20]
So you have to be there, but at the same
time, I don’t have to move my headquarters to
[00:13:38.08]
[00:13:38.08]
do that. We, like you and I are talking on
Skype right now, we could be talking on
[00:13:42.13]
[00:13:42.13]
Zoom, we could be using Google Hangouts,
there’s a bunch of
[00:13:46.07]
[00:13:46.07]
different products you can use to have
teams virtually scattered all over the
[00:13:51.16]
[00:13:51.16]
planet. If you think about Matt Mullenweg’s
company, the WordPress guys, they’re
[00:13:56.24]
[00:13:56.24]
everywhere, like they… Michael: I actually
went to their office, which they shared
[00:14:01.09]
[00:14:01.09]
space with True Ventures, I don’t know if
they still do, and we walked in… It was
[00:14:05.19]
[00:14:05.19]
like two or three in the afternoon, and
it was completely empty. It was a beautiful
[00:14:09.14]
[00:14:09.14]
office with a couch and a view of the
Bay, it was gorgeous.
[00:14:13.00]
[00:14:13.00]
And there was no one there, and I turned to Tony,
and I said, “Are they on a field trip or
[00:14:18.11]
[00:14:18.11]
something?” and he’s like, “No it’s a
virtual company.” They have people
[00:14:21.15]
[00:14:21.15]
absolutely everywhere. It was amazing.
[00:14:23.03]
[00:14:23.03]
Blake: Yeah well, you can, you can do a lot of
that. We, I mean with all the offices, we
[00:14:26.14]
[00:14:26.14]
still have great communications, we use
video conferencing a ton. We have things
[00:14:31.29]
[00:14:31.29]
called wormholes, where we actually put a
camera and a monitor at the end of a
[00:14:36.18]
[00:14:36.18]
hallway or the end of like a row of
cubes that attaches itself to another
[00:14:41.15]
[00:14:41.15]
hallway with a row of cubes in another
[00:14:43.00]
[00:14:43.00]
office, and people can sit there and just, “Hey John,
you know, what do you think about this? I
[00:14:47.07]
[00:14:47.07]
have a question for you.” Michael: Peer through the wall.
Blake: Yeah, basically, yeah. Michael: That’s cool, so
[00:14:53.02]
[00:14:53.02]
you mentioned GoDaddy’s ads, and the ads,
to me, are fascinating because some
[00:14:58.27]
[00:14:58.27]
of the ads before your time have been called
overly sexual, and yet massively
[00:15:03.05]
[00:15:03.05]
effective, right? Like Godaddy, I think
[00:15:05.06]
[00:15:05.06]
what I read had an 80% brand
recognition in American households which
[00:15:08.29]
[00:15:08.29]
is unbelievably high, for a company of
GoDaddy’s size, so I guess the question I
[00:15:14.05]
[00:15:14.05]
want to ask you is… A. do you feel the ads
were almost like a necessary evil at the
[00:15:18.17]
[00:15:18.17]
time to get the publicity, and then when
you wanted to go public, and you were
[00:15:22.29]
[00:15:22.29]
maturing kind of change course? Or how do you
view that, how do you reconcile that? Blake: Yeah, well,
[00:15:27.19]
[00:15:27.19]
I think…what… I think you said it right, I mean, at least part of those ads were
[00:15:32.05]
[00:15:32.05]
incredibly effective, right? To have
eighty percent brand recognition, for a
[00:15:37.04]
[00:15:37.04]
company of GoDaddy’s size, when you look
at Apple, in around ’90, you know to be
[00:15:41.07]
[00:15:41.07]
only 10 points behind that, that’s
pretty amazing. So I am
[00:15:47.16]
[00:15:47.16]
absolutely sure that without the… some of the work,
without the work that Bob Parsons, the founder
[00:15:53.06]
[00:15:53.06]
had done, and without taking the risk of,
you know, doing those ads, you know, it did… We
[00:15:58.05]
[00:15:58.05]
wouldn’t be in the same place we are now.
You know, he was…. he went a place nobody
[00:16:03.02]
[00:16:03.02]
else would go.
[00:16:03.26]
[00:16:03.26]
It was bold as all get out, and that’s who the
guy is, very funny guy, got a big sense
[00:16:09.09]
[00:16:09.09]
of humor, and frankly said, you
know, this is going to work.
[00:16:12.09]
[00:16:12.24]
I’m gonna do a Super Bowl ad. What do I
know about the Super Bowl, they’re mostly
[00:16:15.20]
[00:16:15.20]
guys, they’re mostly drinking, and this is
going to get their attention, and Bob has
[00:16:20.04]
[00:16:20.04]
told me once that, you know, domains
honestly are about as, if you’re trying to
[00:16:25.08]
[00:16:25.08]
explain it to somebody, that’s about as
interesting as wet cardboard, and so if
[00:16:29.16]
[00:16:29.16]
you can make something that’s kind of
funny and humorous and gets
[00:16:34.08]
[00:16:34.08]
people’s attention, and, you know, in a way
that’s shocking,
[00:16:37.19]
[00:16:37.19]
you’re going to get known, and he used
that formula over and over again and
[00:16:41.17]
[00:16:41.17]
built a big brand. And my role
coming into the company was to
[00:16:47.24]
[00:16:47.24]
take the company, grow the company, be
able to take the company public, and to
[00:16:52.26]
[00:16:52.26]
to build on top of all those things he’s
done and in…
[00:16:56.05]
[00:16:56.05]
What we did was, we tried to change that
narrative so it was about small
[00:17:01.17]
[00:17:01.17]
businesses, what they did, what we do for
them, and try to do it in a way— and who
[00:17:06.25]
[00:17:06.25]
we are— and try to do it in a way that
was, you know, humorous and a little edgy,
[00:17:11.19]
[00:17:11.19]
and what we’re trying to do is,
people would tell you, “Gosh, of course I
[00:17:16.29]
[00:17:16.29]
know GoDaddy. What is it that you guys
do again?” So we were trying to get to the
[00:17:22.07]
[00:17:22.07]
person that knows the brand, but doesn’t
know what we do. Most folks, when
[00:17:29.01]
[00:17:29.01]
they knew that they wanted a
the domain, boom, GoDaddy was the name in
[00:17:32.10]
[00:17:32.10]
their head. They didn’t have any others. Network
Solutions is not a super catchy, catchy
[00:17:38.14]
[00:17:38.14]
name. Michael: By the way, where did the name come
from, GoDaddy? Blake: Well, it’s like a lot of
[00:17:43.26]
[00:17:43.26]
small businesses today, when small
businesses are trying to figure out what
[00:17:47.14]
[00:17:47.14]
they’re going to name their company they’ll
go up online to see if the URL’s available, and
[00:17:53.11]
[00:17:53.11]
so Bob and our CMO, Barb Rechterman, was…
Michael: What year was this? Blake: This is ’97, so this
[00:18:02.15]
[00:18:02.15]
is 19 years ago, right? And they’re up searching
around, looking for… Bob’s, you know,
[00:18:07.12]
[00:18:07.12]
again a super funny guy, a super funny guy, he’s like, “Okay, let’s call it FatDaddy. Cuz you know, I’m not in
[00:18:12.22]
[00:18:12.22]
great shape. We’ll call it Fat Daddy. Nah it’s
already taken already.
[00:18:15.26]
[00:18:15.26]
How about Big Daddy? Okay, no, that’s taken
already. What about GoDaddy?” And so they
[00:18:22.24]
[00:18:22.24]
picked GoDaddy. They came in and announced,
Barb and he came in and announced it tothe
[00:18:25.25]
[00:18:25.25]
company the next morning, okay and the
name of the company was Jomax
[00:18:29.28]
[00:18:29.28]
Technologies, which is a road in Scottsdale,
and he said, “Okay, we’ve changed the name
[00:18:34.17]
[00:18:34.17]
of the company from Jomax Technologies to GoDaddy,”
and, you know, the people in the office
[00:18:39.16]
[00:18:39.16]
looked at him like, “What are you, kidding me? Is that a joke?” You
know, kind of, but no it’s not a joke,
[00:18:45.02]
[00:18:45.02]
that’s we’re going to call the company.“
It’s pretty funny. Michael: It is pretty funny. That’s a great
[00:18:49.02]
[00:18:49.02]
story.
[00:18:49.28]
[00:18:49.28]
What’s your relationship like with
Bob Parsons today? Is he still active in the
[00:18:54.10]
[00:18:54.10]
company, do you call him and seek advice,
is he chairman? Blake: You know, I do. You know
[00:18:58.25]
[00:18:58.25]
he’s not the chairman, he is a board
member, but I do talk to Bob quite often,
[00:19:03.19]
[00:19:03.19]
more often than the other board members.
[00:19:05.28]
[00:19:05.28]
The guy has incredible insight into
what we do, he is actually a great marketer. He
[00:19:11.11]
[00:19:11.11]
is not active in the company, he’s
got like so much other stuff going on,
[00:19:16.18]
[00:19:16.18]
he’s running a golf equipment
company now called PXG (Parsons Extreme
[00:19:22.01]
[00:19:22.01]
Golf) who have signed a ton of really
top-notch of PGA Tour players including
[00:19:27.26]
[00:19:27.26]
Zach Johnson, Chris Kirk, Rocco Mediate,
that’s just the PGA and Senior
[00:19:34.06]
[00:19:34.06]
PGA Tour and the clubs, I’m playing them,
are insanely good
[00:19:37.18]
[00:19:38.06]
and have gotten me about a club and a
half longer than what I was hitting
[00:19:43.00]
[00:19:43.00]
before, so you know, he’s the kind of guy
that will experiment, will be using his mind
[00:19:48.13]
[00:19:48.13]
very creatively, will take a very
different approach than traditional
[00:19:51.28]
[00:19:51.28]
companies that are in that business and
have a success on his
[00:19:55.11]
[00:19:55.11]
hands, and he’s doing really really well
with it. Michael: What’s it like being a public
[00:20:01.06]
[00:20:01.06]
company CEO? I don’t think you had done
that before in your career. What are the
[00:20:05.10]
[00:20:05.10]
most surprising things about it?
[00:20:07.20]
[00:20:07.20]
Blake: So the… nothing’s surprising, I
wouldn’t say it’s surprising, I would say
[00:20:14.29]
[00:20:14.29]
that a couple things happened that were
benefits of taking the company public.
[00:20:20.11]
[00:20:20.11]
The brand became recognized. You know,
when you are a public company, people
[00:20:24.12]
[00:20:24.12]
know exactly how big you are and how
fast you’re growing because— and they
[00:20:27.24]
[00:20:27.24]
understand the metrics, because the metrics
are governed by the SEC, so they know
[00:20:31.29]
[00:20:31.29]
that that stuff’s all real.
[00:20:34.03]
[00:20:34.03]
We had been running the company like it
was public, you know, basically since I
[00:20:37.11]
[00:20:37.11]
got here, so we were, you know, trying to
get a rhythm of business with quarterly board
[00:20:41.14]
[00:20:41.14]
meetings, with some cases, even
readouts of what the results were, and had
[00:20:48.11]
[00:20:48.11]
been thinking about it for quite some
time, so from my perspective, not a whole
[00:20:53.23]
[00:20:53.23]
lot of difference, because the cadence
and the rhythm of the business we have
[00:20:57.01]
[00:20:57.01]
developed was pretty public. Now there
are some things that are different, like
[00:21:00.26]
[00:21:00.26]
I announced that we… Marta Nichols who’s
our head of IR, who is absolutely
[00:21:05.27]
[00:21:05.27]
fantastic, runs a very good process when
we commit to a date, we’ve committed to
[00:21:11.10]
[00:21:11.10]
the date, and you don’t move it, and we try
to do that for the entire year, and then try
[00:21:14.16]
[00:21:14.16]
to do for the next year, so my schedule
has become a lot less flexible
[00:21:18.26]
[00:21:18.26]
and movable, as have all of hours. But it has been good discipline, I
[00:21:25.08]
[00:21:25.08]
think, for us to measure in a way that
can be compared to other companies, and
[00:21:30.09]
[00:21:30.09]
it’s been really interesting. The most…
probably the biggest change is what I can say
[00:21:39.05]
[00:21:39.05]
to the company and what I can’t, cause you
know, I’d love to report, you know, what
[00:21:42.13]
[00:21:42.13]
our month looked like
to employees, and we can’t do that any longer.
[00:21:46.28]
[00:21:46.28]
We have to be, when we do our
quarterly town hall or all hands meeting,
[00:21:52.19]
[00:21:52.19]
we do that after we’ve announced on the
street, because we can’t really… you’d make
[00:21:57.29]
[00:21:57.29]
everybody in the entire company an
insider if you told ’em what was happening,
[00:22:01.24]
[00:22:01.24]
so we have to actually do that after the
fact. Michael: That must be frustrating. I’m
[00:22:05.16]
[00:22:05.16]
sure there’s stuff you want to tell them.
[00:22:07.06]
[00:22:07.06]
Blake: Yeah, it’s true but that
is probably my most frustrating part
[00:22:12.25]
[00:22:12.25]
of it, and it’s honestly, it’s not
frustrating, it’s just the way, that
[00:22:16.20]
[00:22:16.20]
it works, and I’ve been in companies that
were exactly like that, you know, some
[00:22:20.20]
[00:22:20.20]
small, some big, where you have to be
cautious on how you disclose to be
[00:22:26.24]
[00:22:26.24]
thoughtful about it, so it’s not that big a deal.
[00:22:30.02]
[00:22:30.02]
Michael: So I also read that you were super
impressed, when you were considering the
[00:22:34.22]
[00:22:34.22]
role, about the loyalty that GoDaddy
customers displayed, and is that correct
[00:22:41.00]
[00:22:41.00]
by the way? Blake: That’s true. Michael: okay I’m curious
what you think drives that loyalty. I
[00:22:46.19]
[00:22:46.19]
mean, how do you get people to sort of
fall in love with the brand versus just
[00:22:50.06]
[00:22:50.06]
know about it?
[00:22:51.10]
[00:22:51.10]
Blake: Yeah, so that’s a really good question,
and it actually plays into
[00:22:57.21]
[00:22:57.21]
your service
[00:23:00.02]
[00:23:00.02]
angle on this call, that the GoDaddy
service mentality is quite different
[00:23:07.03]
[00:23:07.03]
than other software companies, who view
service as a cost and as a support. We just
[00:23:12.09]
[00:23:12.09]
support people, they call up, we try to
get them off- solve their problem, try to get ’em off the phone,
[00:23:15.26]
[00:23:15.26]
have ’em reference a FAQ, go read the
FAQ, that will solve your problem. We do,
[00:23:19.28]
[00:23:19.28]
we have a very different methodology
that we use. We try to consult with
[00:23:25.18]
[00:23:25.18]
customers, we ask them where they are
in their life cycle,
[00:23:28.02]
[00:23:28.02]
ask ’em and, you know what, and we actually
segment our customer psychographically, we
[00:23:32.13]
[00:23:32.13]
not, you know, lawyer, restaurant,
[00:23:35.25]
[00:23:36.18]
hotel, etcetera, we actually think about:
you’re nascent, you’re small and hungry,
[00:23:42.06]
[00:23:42.06]
you’re up and running and dreaming big,
you’re established and content, or you’re an
[00:23:45.23]
[00:23:45.23]
e-commerce guy, and if we know where you
are in your
[00:23:50.11]
[00:23:50.11]
lifecycle, we can give you advice on what
you should be doing next,
[00:23:53.14]
[00:23:53.14]
and while we’re doing that, we can give
you more confidence
[00:23:56.14]
[00:23:56.29]
and tell you what the next thing is that
you should do or you should buy from us,
[00:24:00.14]
[00:24:00.14]
and so we end up with a very stable
cohort, where, you know, 85% of
[00:24:05.21]
[00:24:05.21]
our customers stay with us, and after the
first year, which is where most
[00:24:10.17]
[00:24:10.17]
attrition happens, they stay with us, they’re with
us for a couple years, they’re with us forever,
[00:24:13.24]
[00:24:13.24]
because they know they can call us, they
can get their questions answered, they
[00:24:18.10]
[00:24:18.10]
can talk to a real person who really
wants to talk to them,
[00:24:21.11]
[00:24:21.11]
and not try to get them off the phone
and be able to service them in a way
[00:24:27.12]
[00:24:27.12]
that’s superhuman, so if you think of us as
being a technology company with a very
[00:24:31.29]
[00:24:31.29]
human touch, that builds better loyalty
than being a technology company that
[00:24:37.06]
[00:24:37.06]
didn’t know that you know there’s got to be
people working there somewhere, but you never
[00:24:42.05]
[00:24:42.05]
get to see ’em, you know, and I’ve had
customers tell me, “Man, I’ve tried to
[00:24:46.05]
[00:24:46.05]
call google. No, no way.” Michael: I don’t even think
Google has a main phone number that’s
[00:24:50.14]
[00:24:50.14]
published. You gotta work.
[00:24:52.20]
[00:24:52.20]
Blake: I don’t know, man, yeah. Michael: I’ve heard you
view your customer service team as a
[00:24:58.18]
[00:24:58.18]
secret weapon. Blake: It’s true.
[00:24:59.22]
[00:24:59.22]
And I also read that they account for up
to 25% of your revenue.
[00:25:04.11]
[00:25:04.11]
Blake: Yeah, that’s right.
[00:25:06.19]
[00:25:06.19]
Michael: Which is incredible, and
it’s interesting because you guys are
[00:25:11.03]
[00:25:11.03]
serving small businesses, which
historically are a category that are
[00:25:14.25]
[00:25:14.25]
expensive to reach, they don’t spend that
much money,
[00:25:17.25]
[00:25:18.17]
there’s all sorts of reasons why, if I was
writing out of business plan, I might not
[00:25:22.08]
[00:25:22.08]
go after small businesses first because
it’s expensive. How do you reconcile
[00:25:27.21]
[00:25:27.21]
that? You got… you’re clearly spending a lot
of money on customer service, I’ve always…
[00:25:31.11]
[00:25:31.11]
I always think the best marketing is
great customer service, which you clearly
[00:25:34.17]
[00:25:34.17]
are doing at GoDaddy, but how do you
reconcile the cost of that compared to,
[00:25:38.29]
[00:25:38.29]
you know, my twenty dollar a year domain?
[00:25:41.25]
[00:25:41.25]
Blake: Yeah, well it’s interesting, so they… I’ll
give you a couple different
[00:25:47.01]
[00:25:47.01]
thoughts on this.
[00:25:48.24]
[00:25:48.24]
The marketing that we did early created
brand recognition to a pretty
[00:25:54.07]
[00:25:54.07]
extreme. Barb Rechterman, our CMO, is a
incredibly metrics driven marketer who
[00:26:00.24]
[00:26:00.24]
knows exactly how much money it costs to
acquire a customer, and we also know what
[00:26:04.29]
[00:26:04.29]
our lifetime value to the customer is
going to be, based on how long they stay
[00:26:07.28]
[00:26:07.28]
with us, so if you have low churn, and you
have low attrition, and you have low
[00:26:12.23]
[00:26:12.23]
acquisition costs, you can
make small business pencil pretty well.
[00:26:17.02]
[00:26:17.02]
Our lifetime value to cost of
acquisition is 10 X, 8 to 10 x, which is
[00:26:24.29]
[00:26:24.29]
crazy, and it’s a little bit different by
country, but overall around 8 to 10 x,
[00:26:29.00]
[00:26:29.00]
and those numbers in any business are
incredible.
[00:26:34.24]
[00:26:35.10]
You know, we’re running about 60 bucks in
terms of cost of acquisition. If you
[00:26:39.08]
[00:26:39.08]
think about Constant Contact as an
example, they’re about ten times that, they’re
[00:26:42.21]
[00:26:42.21]
about six hundred dollars. If you’re spending six hundred
[00:26:46.21]
[00:26:46.21]
dollars to acquire a customer, you have
to charge a lot more for your product be
[00:26:51.23]
[00:26:51.23]
able to make it pencil. When you’re
charging sixty dollars for a
[00:26:56.13]
[00:26:56.13]
customer
[00:26:58.03]
[00:26:58.03]
acquisition, every customer acquisition,
[00:27:01.06]
[00:27:01.06]
you don’t have to charge much, right? So
our average, you know, if I think our
[00:27:05.17]
[00:27:05.17]
average yearly spend is around a hundred
and twenty-five bucks, out of our base,
[00:27:10.09]
[00:27:10.09]
which is muy pequeno, if you are Google
or Microsoft. Man, that’s not a whole lot
[00:27:16.25]
[00:27:16.25]
of recurring spend, but there… it’s a
subscription business. They’re with us for
[00:27:21.14]
[00:27:21.14]
a long, long time.
[00:27:22.19]
[00:27:22.19]
Michael: So six months. In six months, you’ve
recouped your acquisition costs and then
[00:27:26.16]
[00:27:26.16]
you’re off to the races. Blake: Pretty much,
yeah, and then we’re….
[00:27:30.16]
[00:27:30.16]
That’s pretty, pretty handsome, now that-
the care organization, our customer care
[00:27:35.13]
[00:27:35.13]
organization is a profit center for us, so
they don’t just drive revenue, they drive
[00:27:39.28]
[00:27:39.28]
margin. So those guys operate that
entire business, and based on the sales
[00:27:45.21]
[00:27:45.21]
that they make inside the care center, they’re
profitable. Michael: But you’re still…
[00:27:49.27]
[00:27:49.27]
Blake: And then the other 75% is all web. Michael: That’s amazing, because you don’t
[00:27:55.00]
[00:27:55.00]
usually think of a customer care
representative as being a a profit
[00:27:58.26]
[00:27:58.26]
center, but you somehow have been
able to do that in a way that’s human,
[00:28:03.01]
[00:28:03.01]
that’s not a telemarketer or spammy or
or things that might be negatively
[00:28:09.14]
[00:28:09.14]
associated with a profit center. They’re somehow
building relationships and therefore
[00:28:13.23]
[00:28:13.23]
driving revenue. Blake: That’s right. We actually
have two… we have a series of things that
[00:28:18.03]
[00:28:18.03]
we measure the reps on, and how they’re commissioned, and how they’re paid. One is, of course, sales,
[00:28:23.20]
[00:28:23.20]
the other is where are their CSS scores, where’s
your customer satisfaction score, so if they
[00:28:28.15]
[00:28:28.15]
have a high CSS score and they’re doing
a good job selling, then they’re doing
[00:28:33.22]
[00:28:33.22]
a good job, right, and they’re making sure
the customers feel like they were taken
[00:28:37.04]
[00:28:37.04]
care of, and managing. And look, we’re not
going to get everyone right, but we’re
[00:28:41.13]
[00:28:41.13]
averaging like 8.9 out of
10 on our— Michael: That’s very high. Blake It’s
[00:28:47.28]
[00:28:47.28]
very high, and even when we
train new care centers, and we now have
[00:28:51.27]
[00:28:51.27]
care centers in Arizona, in
Iowa, and those two centers service Latin
[00:28:57.11]
[00:28:57.11]
America— well, I’ll just say the Americas and
the little English speaking markets like
[00:29:03.01]
[00:29:03.01]
Australia, UK, Canada, and then we have
a care center in India that covers all of
[00:29:09.11]
[00:29:09.11]
India. That’s in Hyderabad, but it’s only
for India,
[00:29:11.22]
[00:29:11.22]
and then we have a care center in Dalian,
China, that’s for our Asia group, and
[00:29:18.02]
[00:29:18.02]
then one in Belfast that is for Europe,
and those two: let’s use India and
[00:29:24.17]
[00:29:24.17]
Belfast, which are the ones we’ve had the
longest, they’re almost at the exact same
[00:29:29.07]
[00:29:29.07]
number, that 8.9 number, because the way
that we teach folks, the tools that we
[00:29:33.03]
[00:29:33.03]
use, the CRM system that’s our own,
my allows us to do it, so we end up
[00:29:39.13]
[00:29:39.13]
having very similar CSS scores, and, you
know, our average order size, our AOS, is about
[00:29:44.23]
[00:29:44.23]
the same.
[00:29:46.11]
[00:29:46.11]
Michael: That’s incredible. I want to talk about
SOPA for a minute. You came out
[00:29:51.13]
[00:29:51.13]
against GoDaddy’s former support
of SOPA, which, by the way, I
[00:29:55.09]
[00:29:55.09]
admire that you did that, and I’m
just curious what you think the balance
[00:29:59.04]
[00:29:59.04]
is between privacy and and reasonable
cases which technology companies should
[00:30:08.15]
[00:30:08.15]
assist the government. In other words, are
there any reasonable cases where it
[00:30:12.21]
[00:30:12.21]
makes sense for a tech company to
cooperate with the government agency, you
[00:30:15.22]
[00:30:15.22]
know, there was a terrorist attack or
something like that, or are you in
[00:30:18.08]
[00:30:18.08]
favor of end-to-end encryption and super
strong policy— privacy constraints?
[00:30:24.22]
[00:30:24.22]
Blake: Look, our
number-one obligation is the privacy of
[00:30:29.17]
[00:30:29.17]
our customers, that’s number one.
[00:30:31.20]
[00:30:31.20]
So, you know, the government can have a
whole bunch of different opinions on
[00:30:35.07]
[00:30:35.07]
what’s right and what’s wrong, but
if it’s not breaking the law,
[00:30:40.17]
[00:30:41.02]
you know, governments can overstep and
say, “Well, we think that’s not right.”
[00:30:45.12]
[00:30:45.12]
Well, if you think it’s breaking the law,
then you’re gonna issue a subpoena, and
[00:30:49.11]
[00:30:49.11]
move on that, but honestly,
if we get a subpoena from a government,
[00:30:55.02]
[00:30:55.02]
then, you know, we will review
the subpoena, honor the subpoena if we think
[00:31:00.05]
[00:31:00.05]
it’s right, but that’s
something that anybody in business has to
[00:31:05.15]
[00:31:05.15]
do, but boy, I tell you, man, the most
important thing I think that we can do
[00:31:11.19]
[00:31:11.19]
is keep our customers data private. It’s
their data,
[00:31:14.27]
[00:31:15.23]
their personal data, their website data,
that’s all theirs.
[00:31:18.23]
[00:31:19.13]
Michael: Does GoDaddy routinely get hit
up by the government for access the data
[00:31:24.12]
[00:31:24.12]
and stuff like that, just like any
hosting company?
[00:31:27.00]
[00:31:27.00]
Blake: Oh, if you are a SAS based company, and
you have customers on top of that SAS
[00:31:33.00]
[00:31:33.00]
backend, you are going
to get requests from the government for
[00:31:38.07]
[00:31:38.07]
information. That’s why having a
policy that is pro customer, pro
[00:31:43.12]
[00:31:43.12]
privacy, customers first, privacy first, is
extremely important.
[00:31:48.07]
[00:31:48.07]
Michael: Yep, makes sense. I wanted to talk to you about
culture. You know, you and I met at a
[00:31:54.04]
[00:31:54.04]
conference a few years ago, where you
just replied to a cold email I sent you
[00:31:59.01]
[00:31:59.01]
saying, “Hey, let’s grab a coffee. We’re at the
same conference,” and we wound up going on
[00:32:02.05]
[00:32:02.05]
a bike ride and doing some other fun
stuff.
[00:32:04.27]
[00:32:04.27]
And from what I’ve read, that same
kind of policy transfers to GoDaddy,
[00:32:09.26]
[00:32:09.26]
where you have an open-door policy, and
there’s a certain casualness and
[00:32:14.22]
[00:32:14.22]
approachability factor that I think
isn’t that common among public company
[00:32:19.06]
[00:32:19.06]
CEOs. I’m curious how important you
think that is to the success of GoDaddy, and
[00:32:25.20]
[00:32:25.20]
do you kind of go out of your way, do you
make yourself accessible to your
[00:32:28.26]
[00:32:28.26]
employees?
[00:32:29.19]
[00:32:29.19]
Kinda talk about that. Blak: Yeah, I mean I do.
I think Bob did the same thing. You know, Bob had a… he tried
[00:32:36.12]
[00:32:36.12]
to create a company that was fun, that was
energetic. I think people will do their
[00:32:41.20]
[00:32:41.20]
best work when they’re having fun, and
they feel like they can express
[00:32:44.08]
[00:32:44.08]
themselves, so I’m very in favor of
letting people be exactly who they are
[00:32:49.16]
[00:32:49.16]
when they’re in the office, and if that
means, you know, you wear shorts
[00:32:53.05]
[00:32:53.05]
every day, you know, don’t wear long pants, or you wear
flip-flops, and you wanna have a
[00:32:58.04]
[00:32:58.04]
conversation with anybody, including me,
then that oughta be the way the
[00:33:02.07]
[00:33:02.07]
company’s run, and I actually, you
know, “live passionately” is one of our
[00:33:06.18]
[00:33:06.18]
values at the company, and I actually
believe that you, the CEO, you have to set that
[00:33:11.20]
[00:33:11.20]
example, and for me, you can see I got a balance board in the back of my office over here
[00:33:16.18]
[00:33:16.18]
they take phone calls on, where I can, you
know, get a little bit of a core and quad
[00:33:21.01]
[00:33:21.01]
workout while I’m doing a conference call. I have a drum
set over in the corner, and and tell
[00:33:26.01]
[00:33:26.01]
people… Look, you know, your life…
[00:33:28.29]
[00:33:28.29]
You think about life generally, the
people who work hard and and love their
[00:33:33.05]
[00:33:33.05]
job and also love their family,
quite often your job will invade your
[00:33:38.02]
[00:33:38.02]
home life without a whole lot of
consideration, and because you love your
[00:33:42.28]
[00:33:42.28]
job, you work hard, you’ll let that come
in. So I’m actually in favor of saying like, well
[00:33:47.25]
[00:33:47.25]
bring some of your life in. Like if your
work is going to go interrupt your life,
[00:33:51.22]
[00:33:51.22]
and you’re gonna make that okay, and you’re
going to explain your wife, or your kids,
[00:33:55.17]
[00:33:55.17]
that, “Hey, I’ve got to get on a conference
call real quick. I’ll be back in an hour,”
[00:33:58.10]
[00:33:58.10]
then make the other true as well. Let
some of your life come into the office,
[00:34:02.21]
[00:34:02.21]
so I’ve been a proponent of
that for really forever, and whether I was
[00:34:10.09]
[00:34:10.09]
at Microsoft, whether I was at
Yahoo, or here, so that’s very much
[00:34:14.19]
[00:34:15.19]
the way I think the company should
be running. I think one of the reasons I’m in
[00:34:19.07]
[00:34:19.07]
this job is because culturally, that was
a fit for them,
[00:34:23.15]
[00:34:23.15]
and it feels right. I mean, I’m the
same guy pretty much at home that I am
[00:34:30.06]
[00:34:30.06]
in the office,
[00:34:31.14]
[00:34:31.14]
you know, all the way down to… if it
gets hot, and I’m Scottsdale right now so
[00:34:35.29]
[00:34:35.29]
it’s hot, and I’m wearing shorts.
Michael: It makes total sense, and I
[00:34:41.03]
[00:34:41.03]
think that a lot of CEOs really make a
mistake of kind of putting up this
[00:34:45.16]
[00:34:45.16]
veneer, and as a result they’re not
approachable, and you know, they’re also
[00:34:49.22]
[00:34:49.22]
not themselves, so it’s awesome to see
the reversal of that. So you’ve also
[00:34:55.10]
[00:34:55.10]
been a champion for equal pay for women.
[00:34:58.07]
[00:34:58.07]
You’ve taken a public stance on this,
you publicly share stats on it,
[00:35:03.03]
[00:35:03.03]
you sponsor students to attend the
Grace Hopper conference,
[00:35:06.03]
[00:35:06.24]
why is that important to you, and why
don’t more public company CEOs take a
[00:35:11.17]
[00:35:11.17]
stand?
[00:35:12.12]
[00:35:12.12]
Blake: I think more company… more public
company CEOs are starting to take a
[00:35:18.14]
[00:35:18.14]
stand. I’ve always believed that
diverse workforces produce better
[00:35:22.23]
[00:35:22.23]
products. I’ve also believed, you know,
you’d have to be blind not to see that
[00:35:29.20]
[00:35:29.20]
women and minorities have been under represented
in the tech field for the 30 years I’ve been in it.
[00:35:34.22]
[00:35:34.22]
Michael: Just go to a tech conference and you’ll look around and know that.
[00:35:39.20]
[00:35:39.20]
Blake: Any conference except the Grace Hopper
conference. Michael: Yes. Blake: It’s pretty clear
[00:35:44.12]
[00:35:44.12]
where the ratios are and where the
numbers fall and, you know, women are just
[00:35:49.12]
[00:35:49.12]
as smart as guys are, they’re just as
inclined for mathematics as
[00:35:55.21]
[00:35:55.21]
anyone, right? There is no gender bias in
mathematic or scientific aptitude.
[00:35:59.08]
[00:36:00.06]
So what can we do to try to improve the
market for women in tech, which will
[00:36:07.11]
[00:36:07.11]
help build companies. It’s a
hard problem because it starts in, you
[00:36:12.29]
[00:36:12.29]
know, in elementary school, and you know
Hadi Partovi can talk to you about this
[00:36:16.29]
[00:36:16.29]
in spades, but starts an elementary school,
goes up to junior high and high school,
[00:36:20.24]
[00:36:20.24]
and fewer and fewer women
matriculate out of tech, and
[00:36:25.24]
[00:36:25.24]
computer science, and hard sciences. They may
go into
[00:36:27.24]
[00:36:27.24]
biology or chemistry, but they stay
away from
[00:36:30.27]
[00:36:30.27]
some of the engineering disciplines,
which are incredibly creative, I
[00:36:34.24]
[00:36:34.24]
believe, especially computer science
where you have just a ton of potential
[00:36:39.10]
[00:36:39.10]
solutions to any one problem, so the
creativity is huge there. So I am
[00:36:47.24]
[00:36:47.24]
passionate about it, I have been for a
long time. My sister passed away about 15
[00:36:51.08]
[00:36:51.08]
years ago, and she was a very large
proponent of equality for women, and
[00:37:01.02]
[00:37:01.02]
she passed away kind of tragically, and
she was in fact one of the leading (
[00:37:06.27]
[00:37:06.27]
certainly in the US) one of the leading
authorities on the effect of media on
[00:37:15.05]
[00:37:15.05]
women and self-esteem and body image, and
she pushed really hard to solve that and
[00:37:21.10]
[00:37:21.10]
was in fact an anorexic and bulimic
herself growing up
[00:37:24.23]
[00:37:24.23]
and was trying to do as much as she
could, and when she passed, my promise to
[00:37:29.22]
[00:37:29.22]
her was that I’d do everything I could in
my chosen field to advance women. I
[00:37:35.17]
[00:37:35.17]
didn’t know what that meant at time or what I’d be able to do, but I’ve been able
[00:37:40.05]
[00:37:40.05]
to at least move, I think, move the
ball a little bit, certainly at my
[00:37:45.22]
[00:37:45.22]
company, and by making some of the
things that we’ve been doing here at
[00:37:49.17]
[00:37:49.17]
GoDaddy public, I think it creates an
environment or at least a situation
[00:37:56.23]
[00:37:56.23]
where there’s got to be a response. So
when we published our salary data by
[00:38:02.09]
[00:38:02.09]
level for engineers and found out where
we were from a parity perspective and did
[00:38:07.02]
[00:38:07.02]
some, did a lot of research, and started
spending time with the Clayman
[00:38:10.10]
[00:38:10.10]
Institute to improve the way our
language is used in job requisitions, and
[00:38:14.25]
[00:38:14.25]
applications, and performance reviews,
like promotion documents we started
[00:38:23.07]
[00:38:23.07]
changing the language to make sure that
we didn’t have bias built into it,
[00:38:25.20]
[00:38:25.20]
because we’re all biased, every one of us, anybody who says they’re not is likely more
[00:38:30.12]
[00:38:30.12]
biased than somebody who’s aware they
are, so I think it was a
[00:38:36.00]
[00:38:36.00]
really good opportunity to be able to do
something to kinda
[00:38:38.19]
[00:38:38.19]
level the playing field, and at least do
something that can help… Michael: And where are you at today?
[00:38:44.20]
[00:38:44.20]
Is the playing field leveled completely… Blake: Oh hell no. Michael: Is it
more leveled at GoDaddy?
[00:38:48.00]
[00:38:48.16]
Blake: Well it’s gotten better, so
our numbers are moving. Again, you know,
[00:38:52.27]
[00:38:52.27]
this is gonna be a couple decades
solution, right, when you have numbers
[00:38:56.20]
[00:38:56.20]
that are as big as we’re talking about,
we’ve got half a million open jobs for
[00:39:00.29]
[00:39:00.29]
computer scientists right now in the
States.
[00:39:03.22]
[00:39:03.22]
It takes a long time to change the
number dramatically
[00:39:10.26]
[00:39:10.26]
so it’s going to be a very slow move.
You know, our populations only change
[00:39:16.14]
[00:39:16.14]
one or two percent, but, you know,
encouraging as our new college grad
[00:39:20.07]
[00:39:20.07]
computer science at entrance, we were
fifty percent women. For our new interns,
[00:39:25.16]
[00:39:25.16]
this year’s interns, were thirty-seven
percent women so we’re seeing movement,
[00:39:29.23]
[00:39:29.23]
and you just kind of keep doing the
right thing, and just keep trying to
[00:39:34.23]
[00:39:34.23]
create an environment that’s great. I
think put yourself out there,
[00:39:38.22]
[00:39:38.22]
and frankly, that was one of the things I
thought I could do to help solve it ,
[00:39:42.13]
[00:39:42.13]
put myself out there in a way
that was demonstrative that other folks
[00:39:46.29]
[00:39:46.29]
that are CEOs and other companies would
be willing to do too. Michael: Yep. I
[00:39:51.27]
[00:39:51.27]
want to selfishly ask you a customer
service question, given the line of work that
[00:39:55.11]
[00:39:55.11]
Service is in, and ask you about bots and
the idea of using bots for customer
[00:40:01.22]
[00:40:01.22]
service.
[00:40:02.21]
[00:40:02.21]
You just told me a little while ago
that customer care accounts for
[00:40:07.01]
[00:40:07.01]
twenty-five percent of revenue, and that
relationship is so important.
[00:40:10.08]
[00:40:10.08]
What do you think the role is, if any, of
a bot for the future of customer service
[00:40:15.16]
[00:40:15.16]
both at GoDaddy and kind of in the world?
[00:40:18.17]
[00:40:18.17]
Blake:I think it could be good
[00:40:22.05]
[00:40:22.05]
actually, and if you can… if you think about
the continuum of service that’s out there,
[00:40:25.28]
[00:40:25.28]
there’s FAQ, you know, just FAQs
that exist, there’s a chat, which can be
[00:40:32.01]
[00:40:32.01]
human assisted chat, and then there’s
real life support, and to think that
[00:40:36.27]
[00:40:36.27]
those are the three selection
points, that doesn’t really make
[00:40:42.05]
[00:40:42.05]
sense. I’ve got email, so that’s another
form where I can get, I can send a query
[00:40:47.03]
[00:40:47.03]
and get something back, that’s not a bot
but it’s somebody that’s gonna go through a corpus of data
[00:40:51.18]
[00:40:51.18]
and send you the most appropriate
response, and if you can actually
[00:40:54.20]
[00:40:54.20]
algorithmically tune a bot to have
the right answers when queried, it can
[00:41:02.13]
[00:41:02.13]
actually be quite healthy. Now that’s not a
personality. I think Alaska Airlines, I
[00:41:06.04]
[00:41:06.04]
think, has done a pretty good job with
their bot. Michael: Ask Jen? Blake: Yes, Jen. She’s very…
[00:41:11.01]
[00:41:11.01]
pretty darn good, I think.
[00:41:14.02]
[00:41:14.02]
Doesn’t give me all the answers I want,
sometimes I still, in frustration, call and
[00:41:17.10]
[00:41:17.10]
talk to somebody real, but I think
there’s a place for it. It’s not going to
[00:41:21.23]
[00:41:21.23]
ever replace human interaction, because I
think human interaction has
[00:41:27.29]
[00:41:27.29]
warmth associated with it, has humility, has
personality, has laughter, and those things
[00:41:33.18]
[00:41:33.18]
don’t come as readily, I think from, a bot.
Not to say that they can’t, as
[00:41:38.11]
[00:41:38.11]
technology gets better and better, it could
be there.
[00:41:42.19]
[00:41:42.19]
Michael: Yep. Blake: But I believe people matter a great deal.
[00:41:46.29]
[00:41:46.29]
Michael: What do you think about the landscape
today? Facebook is making a huge push
[00:41:50.14]
[00:41:50.14]
towards bots and trying to get brands to
build on top of messenger, you’ve got
[00:41:54.18]
[00:41:54.18]
Twitter that’s trying to be the customer…
it still is the de facto customer
[00:41:57.25]
[00:41:57.25]
service platform of choice. We see people
create Twitter accounts just so they can
[00:42:01.23]
[00:42:01.23]
complain to a company. Blake: I’ve seen that, for sure.
Michael: I guess, do you use any bots in your life
[00:42:07.05]
[00:42:07.05]
today, have you seen any bots that have
impressed you?
[00:42:10.13]
[00:42:10.13]
Blake: So I used Alaska Airlines as one that I thought was pretty good.
[00:42:16.18]
[00:42:17.09]
I haven’t seen anything that’s really blown my mind. I’ve seen some of the work that
[00:42:23.29]
[00:42:23.29]
Facebook’s been doing, so it’s
interesting. I think actually it could be
[00:42:27.16]
[00:42:27.16]
good for folks that are trying to build
brand and not trying…
[00:42:33.02]
[00:42:33.02]
trying to purport to be real human
interaction.
[00:42:36.07]
[00:42:36.07]
Michael: Yep. Blake: There’s some pretty interesting
things I think you can do around brand,
[00:42:39.09]
[00:42:39.09]
that could be bot oriented. For a
service experience, when somebody’s
[00:42:43.04]
[00:42:43.04]
really having trouble finding how to do
something, or get to the root of a
[00:42:48.25]
[00:42:48.25]
problem, I think there’s gotta be a continuum. To think that you could go from
[00:42:53.16]
[00:42:53.16]
from… for me, this is nirvana, where
you can go from FAQ,
[00:42:56.27]
[00:42:57.21]
to a bot, to a chat, to a real live person
and there’s a continuum of history
[00:43:05.15]
[00:43:05.15]
between all the things that you did
there, so you’re not… you don’t feel like
[00:43:08.25]
[00:43:08.25]
you’re being handed off to another
system, and you have to re-explain your
[00:43:12.12]
[00:43:12.12]
problem or re-explain what your issue
was initially. If you can get that level
[00:43:16.21]
[00:43:16.21]
of data that underlies all of those
platforms, and you know, quite honestly, I…
[00:43:21.07]
[00:43:21.07]
You know, people are a platform. You have
a bunch of technologies that sits
[00:43:25.24]
[00:43:25.24]
underneath every transaction and
interaction we have in our care
[00:43:30.15]
[00:43:30.15]
organization, and all that data is safe,
sowe know what happened next time
[00:43:35.13]
[00:43:35.13]
somebody calls in. We can ask them, “Hey,
well, so how did it go last time because
[00:43:39.13]
[00:43:39.13]
you know, I can see that we had an issue
with, you know, x last time you called in
[00:43:43.28]
[00:43:43.28]
and did that get solved to your
satisfaction?”
[00:43:46.22]
[00:43:46.22]
You know that same data exists in all
those other scenarios, so you could actually
[00:43:52.14]
[00:43:52.14]
have that conversation you had with
a real person be informative on how bot
[00:43:57.22]
[00:43:57.22]
actually treated you.
[00:43:58.29]
[00:43:58.29]
Michael: Yeah, and you’re basically saying just
connect all the channels, I mean i’m
[00:44:02.04]
[00:44:02.04]
amazed if I tweet at a company, if I tweet
them a week later, and they don’t know
[00:44:07.12]
[00:44:07.12]
who I am… It’s amazing to me how if I
tweet at them the first time, they didn’t
[00:44:11.08]
[00:44:11.08]
connect my twitter name to my account, so
they would know. It’s just kind of…
[00:44:15.12]
[00:44:15.12]
Blake: It’s pervasive. What you just described is the way the industry acts today.
[00:44:18.27]
[00:44:18.27]
Michael: Yeah. Blake: You don’t find that
continuum of the store, and forward to
[00:44:26.08]
[00:44:26.08]
real-time, to live, with, you know, slice
bots in there. You just
[00:44:31.16]
[00:44:31.16]
don’t find. Michael: Yep so my last question is… I
thought it was so interesting that I
[00:44:39.03]
[00:44:39.03]
kept reading that you were semi-retired,
which by the way I still don’t
[00:44:41.18]
[00:44:41.18]
understand what semi-retired means, the
semi… Blake:
[00:44:44.13]
[00:44:44.13]
I’ve never said that. Michael: Okay, so other people have said that. Blake: I’ve never said that.
[00:44:47.21]
[00:44:47.21]
Michael: Okay, but there was a period of time, what was it… eight months that you weren’t really…?
[00:44:50.24]
[00:44:50.24]
Blake: Well, I mean when I left Microsoft,
I left for three years and I traveled
[00:44:57.24]
[00:44:57.24]
around the world with my kids, my wife,
and I home schooled them for a year, and
[00:45:01.07]
[00:45:01.07]
just kept traveling. I recommend half
of that. The traveling part, the homeschooling part,
[00:45:06.24]
[00:45:06.24]
not so sure. We didn’t ruin them.
[00:45:09.06]
[00:45:09.06]
That’s the good news.
[00:45:10.13]
[00:45:10.13]
One’s graduating from UCSD right now, the
others at UW, so they’re fine. So that
[00:45:16.06]
[00:45:16.06]
was a three-year hiatus, so that was one year traveling, two years teaching at
[00:45:19.07]
[00:45:19.07]
Pepperdine which was part-time, and
then I just kind of got restless and
[00:45:24.24]
[00:45:24.24]
wanted to go back to… Wanted to go back to
doing something that I felt had scale and
[00:45:29.03]
[00:45:29.03]
meaning. I took the chief product officer
job at Yahoo, which I thought was…
[00:45:34.11]
[00:45:34.11]
could potentially be a really great
publishing platform, had a huge amount of
[00:45:39.17]
[00:45:39.17]
customers.
[00:45:40.20]
[00:45:40.20]
So I did that, and then when I left Yahoo,
that was after a little bit of board
[00:45:45.11]
[00:45:45.11]
turmoil, and some of the things that were
going on there. I took… I did take nine
[00:45:49.24]
[00:45:49.24]
months off to spend it with my
oldest son before he went off to college,
[00:45:55.11]
[00:45:55.11]
to figure out what I actually wanted to
do. I wasn’t in a rush; we were finishing a
[00:46:02.05]
[00:46:02.05]
remodel and a couple other things, so I
was being pretty selective. I sent an
[00:46:06.26]
[00:46:06.26]
email out to a couple of friends in the
Valley, a couple of exec search guys,
[00:46:14.05]
[00:46:14.05]
and said, “Okay, look I’m ready to go back to
work,“ and I had got a couple things
[00:46:17.17]
[00:46:17.17]
lobbed at me while I wasn’t ready to
take anything. So I guess that’s kind
[00:46:23.18]
[00:46:23.18]
of what… Michael: Do you think you’ll ever fully
retire, and what would you do with
[00:46:28.04]
[00:46:28.04]
yourself if you did? Blake: I don’t know. I’ve got a lot
of things I like to do. I mean
[00:46:35.02]
[00:46:35.02]
love golf, and playing those things,
and teachin’ was pretty fun. There’s a
[00:46:42.15]
[00:46:42.15]
whole bunch of things that I will, you
know, occupy myself with. Will I go back
[00:46:46.29]
[00:46:46.29]
and have an 80 hour a week job? I don’t know.
[00:46:51.08]
[00:46:52.17]
I think the future is always
informed by the past. Those that mostly
[00:46:59.26]
[00:46:59.26]
ignore it kind of tend to fail, so I
you know, I don’t know how… what
[00:47:05.06]
[00:47:05.06]
that looks like, so we will see.
It’s not a decision I’m making
[00:47:10.07]
[00:47:10.07]
any time soon, anyway, so it’s like a… Michael: Yep
Blake: I’m having an awful lot of
[00:47:14.24]
[00:47:14.24]
fun. I think it comes down to the idea…
are you working at something important,
[00:47:18.09]
[00:47:18.09]
you doing it with people you love, are you
having fun doing it? And you know, all
[00:47:22.28]
[00:47:22.28]
those things are thumbs up, and as long
as the board’s happy, the investors
[00:47:28.04]
[00:47:28.04]
are happy, and my wife will tolerate my
schedule, I’m good.
[00:47:31.15]
[00:47:32.20]
Michael: That’s a great way to end. I want to
thank you so much for joining me today,
[00:47:36.17]
[00:47:36.17]
and this has been another episode of
Please Hold.
[00:47:39.12]
So, let’s get started with the essentials…
So, you’re a tech company, and you have users… How do you deliver the best experience to the people that matter most: your customers? Is it a beautiful and simple UI? Is it support? Is it the customer touch point? While smartphone apps started as lighters on your phone, then evolved into social/photo/communication tools, today’s apps are connecting people with the physical world around them. Uber connects you with a personal driver. Instacart brings you groceries. Homejoy does your housekeeping. Saucey delivers you drinks. In this new era of mobile platforms that connect you with physical services, what do we owe the customer?
Lien Chang 