GoDaddy is bringing in $1.4 billion in revenue this year and has more than 12 million paying customers, but the online services company led by former Yahoo and Microsoft executive Blake Irving still remains private.
Speaking today at the GeekWire Summit, Irving said that while the company doesn’t have any imminent plans to file for an IPO — a la Twitter today — it is definitely in position to do so.
“It’s something that’s certainly a possibility for us,” Irving said. “Our outcome would be a very good outcome today if we decided to go public. We’re at double digit revenue growth and double digit customer growth.”
So what’s holding the company back?
“When you have a strategy and vision in place, you want to put points on the board for each one of those things before you make yourself a public company,” Irving explained. “We want to be more of an international company and do 30 new languages in 60 markets within the next 18 months. We want to put points on the board for that. We want to be a better hosting company, a better website-building company and do a better job of supporting our customers.”
Irving also talked about GoDaddy relaunching its brand, changing up its marketing strategies, moving away from being a domain company and focusing more on helping small businesses.
“We’re on a geek transformation of the company — who we serve, how we serve them, how we position ourselves and how our employees feel about serving our customers is really different,” he said.
On that point, Irving recommended watching the video below called “Manifest of Kickass” produced by GoDaddy employees to show how the business is changing:
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