Meet Bob Parsons – Serial entrepreneur, elephant hunter and new tech billionaire

It’s been a golden year for tech billionaires, with a steady stream of Silicon Valley types roaring onto rich lists around the world.

Zynga’s Mark Pincus, LinkedIn’s Reed Hoffman and Groupon’s Anthony Mason are all newly-minted billionaires and now we can add another name to that list.

Bob Parsons is the president and largest shareholder of US domain name giant Go Daddy, which has an Australian operation and claims to have a staggering 48 million domain names registered.

Last week Parsons announced he was selling an undisclosed stake in Go Daddy to private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake for an estimated $US2.25 billion.

How much of that sum Parsons receives and how much he retained in the business is unclear, but he is still the company’s biggest shareholder, which should be enough to ensure that his stake is worth well over $1 billion.

Parsons will remain at the helm and said last week that the company plans to use the capital injection to build its international presence and to move into cloud-based services.

“This isn’t a sale,” Parsons said in an interview with the New York Times. “It’s a partnership that’s reinvesting in Go Daddy.”

Parsons is fascinating figure – a war veteran, serial entrepreneur and social media megastar – who has become polarized due to his willingness to attract controversy, whether it’s over sexually suggestive advertising or a bizarre elephant shooting incident.

His story started in the late 1960s when the struggling student narrowly avoided failing his final year of high school and enlisted in the US Marine Corp.

He fought in Vietnam, was wounded and after spending two months in a military hospital was awarded several medals including the Purple Heart.

Parsons enrolled at the University of Baltimore after returning from Vietnam, where he majored in accounting because, he claims, it was the first subject listed in the university’s course guide.

It was a fateful decision. After graduating he was sent to work at a job near Stanford University, bought a book about the Basic programming language and started teaching himself.

In 1984 he founded Parsons Technology and started selling a home accounting program called MoneyCounts. The start-up phase involved at least two near collapses but he persevered and eventually built a company with 1000 employees.

He sold the business in 1994 to Intuit for $US64 million and went to Arizona to retire.

In 1997 he founded Jomax Technologies – named after an “an old dirt road I passed on the drive to work,” he says – with the intention of selling website packages.

But in 1999, just as the company was set to launch its first product, Parsons and his team decided to change the company’s name to something more memorable.

After a week of brainstorming the group had nothing until someone suggested the name Big Daddy. That name was taken but Go Daddy was available.

“We noticed two things that most always happen when someone hears the name Go Daddy for the first time. 1: They smile. We like that. 2: They remember it. We love that,” Parsons once said in a blog post.

Parsons’ brand sticks in consumers’ minds and his marketing strategy was designed to ensure Go Daddy remains in the public eye. The underlying strategy: Sex sells.

Go Daddy is renowned for its raunchy television commercials and media spots that have featured a string of buxom models, athletes and, most famously, a wrestler.

The company launched its first Super Bowl advertisement in 2005 and in subsequent years found itself in trouble with censors over the explicit nature of the spots.

In one famous censorship battle – which Parsons milked beautifully – the company was forced to change an ad with female wrestler Candice Michelle a staggering 13 times before it was allowed to be aired.

Parsons backed that up with personal marketing efforts and his personal blog is regularly updated with video interviews and presentations that are a mix of entrepreneurial advice and tips on life skills documentaries – most of which feature attractive women.

“Five things I wish I learned in Business School. Plus … a smoking HOT blonde,” is the title of one video and a fairly good representation of the content on the blog.

At one stage Parsons had a weekly satellite radio show. According to this CNN article from early 2007 Parsons had his own special sign-off at the end of each program: “I just may bump with the fat woman tonight.”

No, I have no idea what that means either.

But it’s not just Parson’s raunchy marketing efforts that have attracted controversy.

Earlier this year the entrepreneur was caught up in a storm of controversy after posting a video of his trip to Zimbabwe in which he kills a “problem” elephant bull.

The graphic video (check it out here but be warned, it’s not for the squeamish) attracted criticism from animal rights groups and several media commentators.

Parsons defended himself by saying the culling of problem elephants benefits local communities because the elephants destroy crops and threaten local people.

Beneath all Parsons’ marketing efforts it appears that he has a genuine desire to assist entrepreneurs and to that end he has produced 16 rules that business people should follow.

The rules, framed and signed copies of which can be purchase from Parsons’ blog, are a mix of common sense and management tips.

But there are some great slices of advices – let’s finish with five highlights (you can see all 16 here).

Rule 1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone

“I believe that not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone. I hear people say ‘But I’m concerned about security’. My response to that is simple: ‘Security is for cadavers.’ ”

Rule 8. Be quick to decide

“Remember what General George S. Patton said: ‘A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.’ ”

Rule 11. Pay attention to your competitors but pay more attention to what you’re doing

“When you look at your competitors remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.”

Rule 12. Never let anybody push you around

“In our society with our laws and even playing field you have just as much right to what you’re doing as anyone else, provided that what you’re doing is legal.”

Rule 15. Don’t take yourself too seriously

 “Lighten up.  Often at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.”