|
Given
his stature in the industry, Nicks, who
works from the GoDaddy office in Iowa, is
someone everyone who makes a living in
this business would benefit from knowing better.
The personable family
man has been a fixture at domain
conferences for over a decade, so many
have enjoyed meeting him and hearing what
he had to say about domains. However, what
is really fascinating about Paul is the remarkably
round about route he took to get to where
he is now. A lot of people experience some
twists and turns along along the way but, when
looking at the picture of stability
that Nicks is today, it is hard to imagine
anything but a straight line from the
cradle to the corner office for him. The
reality turned out to be the exact
opposite. If Paul's story was a TV show
the theme song might have been Willie
Nelson's "On the Road Again"
and it all began around the time he
started to walk!
|
"I bounced around
quite a bit as a kid," Paul began.
" I was born in
Houston, Texas then moved to live on a
sailboat with my mom after my parents
divorced when I was around two years old. For the next
six or seven years I lived on a 32-foot
sailboat with my brother, mother and
step-father that primarily docked around
San Diego and nearby Coronado. Most of my
memories from this time are fuzzy, but I
do recall running a small business with my
older brother that had us finding golf
balls in the water near a course in
Catalina and selling them back to the
golfers. It was my job to dive down (as a
five or six year old) and retrieve the
balls, while my brother did the sales
work, and pocketed all of the profits! We
were “dirt floor” poor - I don’t
believe there’s an appropriate
sailor’s equivalent |
Paul
on the sailboat with his
stepfather in California. |
|
for that old
term -
but when your home is on the water, I’m
not sure we cared much about what stuff we
weren’t able to buy."
|
"When I was 9 or 10 my
family moved back to Texas, where I
primarily lived and went to school in
Corpus Christi, with a couple of years on
Padre Island as well," Paul
continued. "Summers were spent
living with my father in Houston where I
learned valuable life skills like how to
hunt, fish, throw knives and find my own
outdoor entertainment. Every time we’d
visit Houston, my dad would find at least
one or two Astros games for us to attend
which started my love of sports that
extends now to my own boys. My trips to
Houston also seeded my continuing
fascination with NASA, and by extension,
science and tech. I was lucky enough to go
away to Space Camp one summer and it
continues to be one of the coolest things
I’ve ever done."
Above
left: Back in Texas, Paul
took up soccer in Corpus Christi and
also spent time on
Padre Island where he agrees he
never looked cooler than he does in the
photo at right!
"In the summer before
7th grade we moved to Naples, Florida
because
it was listed as one of the fastest
growing cities in the country and my
step-father was in the drywall business. I
worked on the crew filling holes in
baseboards with wood putty, touch-up
painting and various other small jobs. The
business enjoyed great success despite my
clumsy touch-ups and we were able to live
as if we were wealthy for a while.
Although I didn’t arrive until I was 13,
we stayed in Naples through my high school
and college years. Between going to my
father’s place every summer in Houston
and spending my high school years in
Florida, I typically struggle to answer the
seemingly easy question “where are you
from?” Anymore I’ll typically say
“somewhere warmer than Iowa” and let
it be!," Paul smiled.
When
Paul was 13 the family moved to Naples,
Florida where one of his first stops
was
Wooten's Airboat Tours (a company
still in business today!) for a ride
through The Everglades.
"Through middle
and high school, I learned I was really
good at math, sciences and problem-solving. I took a new
computer
programming class taught by our math
teacher in my sophomore year of high
school, which was the first time I was
able to do something creative with
computers beyond playing Oregon
Trail.
This was around 1990, so our school was
just lucky to have a computer lab. At the
time the typing class with old typewriters
was mandatory and the computer lab classes
were only taken by the nerds, like me.
Now, I say “nerd” with absolute
affection, and not as a derogatory at
all. Myself and a few friends that were on the
math and trivia teams got a front page
picture in the Naples Daily News that
proudly stated “Nerd Herd Conquers
Collier County” and after that I think my
nerd-cred and eventual clique in school
was well established," Nicks laughed.
When
it finally came time to go off to
college you might thing Paul would
finally be able to stay in one
place for awhile but the constant
change in scenery only accelerated.
"My college years were not
nearly as academically successful
as high school as I bounced around
between many schools flunking out,
losing interest and overall not
having a good time," Paul
said. "The progression of
schools goes something like this:
-
Texas
A&M for civil
engineering - failed
-
University
of Central Florida for
computer science - moved
-
University
of Northern Iowa for
computer science – quit to
get a job
-
Northeast
Iowa Community College -
Associate’s degree
-
Jones
International University
(online) – poor choice
-
Capella
College (online) -
Bachelor’s degree in IT,
finally, at 27 years old
-
Arizona
State University (online)
for my MBA
"Those
schools typically came with 1 to 2 years
in between working odd jobs like various
fast food chains, working as a laborer at
a chemical plant in Texas City,
valeting at a posh hotel in Naples,
greeting guests at a comedy club in Disney
World (where I met my wife who was on
a school trip from Iowa), and working at a
cardboard factory in Iowa,"
Paul recalled.
|
Paul
back in Florida for a visit
during his time at Texas A&M. |
|
In
another visit back to Florida
during his time at a cornucopia
of
U.S. colleges, Paul (left) catches
up with his mother and brother. |
"Throughout the
bouncing between schools and weird work
history I learned that I needed more of an
intellectual challenge to be happy than
what they were able to provide. During the
evenings I took to playing around with
building websites, as the programming
classes I took were the ones that I was
most adept in and enjoyed. Programming in
general fascinated me because of the
instant gratification of solving a problem
and seeing the immediate results on screen,"
Nicks said.
"Because I was getting
pretty good at website design and
development I took a chance that
eventually led to a major turning point in
my career. As I was walking through a mall
in Cedar Falls, Iowa one day I passed a
kiosk with a gentleman selling high-speed
internet (reselling a T1 connection from
his house). We struck up a conversation
and I told him I could build websites for
his clients, which were mostly small
businesses. Without a degree or a
portfolio of note, he took a chance on me
and I secured a part-time job in a field
that I was genuinely happy with. I built
several small websites and learned on the
fly how to interview clients to determine
what they needed when often they didn’t
know themselves. I received ½ of each
paying gig, which didn’t exactly pay my
bills or student loans but I was having a
great time!"
|
"My first salaried
real job
was as a database developer within the IT
team of a small computer manufacturing
company here in Iowa that specialized in
custom server builds, mostly for Telephony
companies. I landed the job in April of
2000 for $35,000 a year and then got married
a month later; a pretty exciting time for
me. I didn’t have my Bachelor’s degree
yet, but the guys who hired me liked that
I took the initiative in self-learning
ASP.net and MS Access while working the
part-time web building job. The company at
the time was running an MRP software
solution that didn’t scale very well for
them and was expensive to maintain with
contractors. My job was to start out
writing custom reports for the sales and
marketing teams, pulling directly from the
database, and eventually to build a new
system from scratch that was web based.
Along with my programming duties I spent
time doing the standard in-house IT stuff,
like re-imaging computers, doing updates,
and pretending I didn’t know exactly how
viruses kept getting installed on sales
and marketing’s
computers."
"Things were going
great for a while as sales boomed in the
.com era but around 2001-2002 the tech
sector, especially Telephony, got hit very
hard and we had to layoff employees. |
Paul
and Penny, his wife of 22
years,
soon after they first met. |
|
We
lost 4 people from a 6-person IT team, with
just myself and my manager surviving. I
had to learn how to do more as part of a
much smaller team, both to keep the
company afloat and keep myself valuable
enough to keep around. I stuck around for
five years, refining my coding by building
custom web apps and also learning about
networking and security," Paul said.
|
Through
all of these experiences, good and bad,
Nicks learned how to adapt to constant
changes in his personal and
professional life and keep moving
forward. It was a skill set that would
serve him well when the call finally came
that would bring him to the right place at
the right time - GoDaddy.
|
|
In
2007, Paul landed at
GoDaddy, famous for
Super Bowl ads and Race Car
teams. Here Penny
Nicks gets a close up look
at Danica Patrick's
car
during a GoDaddy holiday
party in 2009. |
|
"After I moved on
from the server manufacturer, I took on a
Senior Developer role at a contracting firm and
worked on cool projects like a CRM at
University of Iowa and an eCommerce site
at a motorcycle store," Paul
recalled. " After a year there,
I got a call from a good friend of mine
from the prior job who was working in the
marketing department of GoDaddy. I
didn’t know much about the company or
the domain space at all, but she said they
were a super fast-growing company that
needed engineering talent. Really, all I
knew at the time about GoDaddy was that
they had Super Bowl ads and they were in
the Internet space. So I wasn’t
sure what I would be getting into, but I
did know that it was |
|
in a growth field
that I had experience with. My interviews
went well enough to get me a job offer as
the Development Group Lead for our Parking
products in April of 2007."
|
"Personally, I’ve
enjoyed bouncing around different
disciplines within GoDaddy throughout my
time here. I learned how to lead a dev
team, then multiple teams, then finally
moved onto the business side after I got
my MBA. The great thing about working here
has been the ability to grow into a
different role whenever the old one
started getting too easy," Nicks
noted in a comment that harkened back to his
peripatetic college years when he learned
that the bigger the challenge he was
given the more he thrived in the
environment.
Paul
with Indy Car driver James Hinchcliffe at
the GoDaddy office in 2012.
|
"One of my favorite
times here was shortly after we were sold
to VC firms," Paul said. " New leadership brought in a
different energy that was hyper-focused on
growth which I aligned very well with. The
first time our interim CEO, Scott
Wagner,
came to the Iowa office he and I had a
chance to sit down and talk about the
Aftermarket and what it’d take to really
lean into it and accelerate our growth.
With nothing off the table, I brought up
acquiring Afternic who I had worked with
as a Domain Listing Service partner. Scott
liked the idea and we moved forward. I had
never been part of an acquisition before,
and the entire process was exhilarating,
tiring, and enlightening."
"Going through
due diligence was the most tedious process
I had ever been a part of, but it was the
first time I was really able to dig into
how another company thinks and operates
within the same industry. While I would
put our engineers up against anyone, what
we gained from Afternic was a much more
complete team of sales, product management
and business development, I learned a ton
from |
Paul
and NASCAR driver Danica Patrick
celebrating GoDaddy's 2013 acquisition
of Afternic. |
|
listening to how that
team approached
the industry that I would never had been
exposed to without working through the
grind of diligence and integration. Buying Afternic
really marked the beginning of GoDaddy as
a leader in the Aftermarket and provided
the catalyst for everything we’ve done
since." |
From
the perspective of domain investors, another
key moment in GoDaddy's aftermarket history
came at the January 2020
NamesCon Global conference in
Austin where GoDaddy CEO Aman Bhutani
delighted attendees (just 4 months
after he had taken the job) by making a
firm commitment to serve domain investors
and the investment/development community.
Since its inception our part of the industry has
struggled to build recognition and
credibility in
mainstream business circles, so having the
leader of the industry's biggest company,
with its unmatched marketing clout, put a
spotlight on the power and value of premium
domains was a major boost. For Nicks, who
had been spreading the aftermarket gospel
both inside GoDaddy and out for years, it
was equally gratifying.
GoDaddy
CEO Aman Bhutani stands up for the domain
investor's community in his
Keynote Speech at the 2020 NamesCon Global
conference in Austin, Texas.
"Getting Aman up to
speed on the importance/value of domain
investors was my primary job when he came
on as CEO," Nicks said. "Prior CEOs absolutely enjoyed
the growth of the investor community and
Aftermarket, but Aman really bought in and
saw the community as unique within GoDaddy
and able to do so much more if we invested
in it. Investment has come in the form of
assigning higher corporate priorities to
product upgrades, like we’ve launched
with a new domain portfolio manager,
CashParking, Afternic, and Auctions
experiences. It has also come from
targeted acquisitions like we’ve had
with Dan.com and DNAcademy this year and
our continued platinum sponsorships of
NamesCon and the Internet Commerce
Association."
Paul
added, "I suppose another
sign of the commitment to the domain
investor community is my own position in
the company by way of promotion to
President of our Domains business unit.
The thought being that we can build domain
products for the most demanding clientele
around, making the experience for everyone
else even better. Not every customer will
need powerful bulk tools, but everyone
does need the security, speed and
resiliency we’re building for our domain
power users."
GoDaddy's
recent
acquisitions of innovative,
investor-friendly companies like Dan.com
and Uniregistry that Paul mentioned
created shockwaves within industry -
both positive and negative. Many
pointed out that the powerful
GoDaddy brand would bring
instant credibility to the popular
but less famous newer services. On
the other hand, others who also
loved what Dan and Uni were offering,
worried about how things might change
under new ownership, so we asked
Paul about current plans for those
companies.
|
|
This
AI portrait of Paul Nicks
reflects the amazing changes
we are seeing technology
today. Nicks plans to use
every cutting edge domain tool
he can get to build products users want. |
|
"Each of these
acquisitions has fundamentally changed how
we operate and build our products,"
Nicks said. "We
targeted each company specifically to
address the needs of our customers, from
sales distribution to domain management to
education. Each of our acquisitions
brought in not only the top products in
the industry across the identified needs
but, more importantly, the teams who built
those innovative products. The first and
most important part of each acquisition
has been to integrate the team, get them
to understand our vision and offer their
own feedback on how we can best move
forward. Employees from Afternic, Uni and
Dan make up the majority of my leadership
team, and bring an insane amount of
experience and innovative ideas with them."
"What you should
expect from the product-side is a
continuing of the integration of Afternic
into the GoDaddy domain management
experience, built by the Uni team, along
with the best features of Dan.com
integrating into Afternic. Dan.com
features that we’ll be integrating
include the incredible sales lander
technology, the transfer bot, and the
really exciting lease-to-own (LTO)
capabilities. I think LTO is going to open
up many more sales opportunities as buyers
can’t always come up with the capital
for a large domain purchase, but are often
able to handle installments," Nicks
noted, adding "Just like Afternic
drove the domain market forward via the
Domain Listing Service, Uni drove it
forward with exceptional UX and an
integration between Aftermarket and domain
management, I expect Dan to drive it
forward with their innovation in payment
options and sales lander optimization."
|
The
past few years have been very strong
ones for the domain aftermarket but
as we write this in December 2022
there are some serious headwinds in
the general economy facing us in 2023.
War, rising interest rates,
inflation and lingering Covid
are among
the issues that have to be tackled.
Since no one knows when those
problems may get resolved,
forecasting how the domain industry
may fare in the new year is a hazy
proposition at best, but Paul was
willing to take a stab at it.
"If the past is any
indication, prior market downturns have
led to an increase in small online
business creation and entrepreneurship," |
Image
from Bigstock |
|
Paul
pointed out. "We
need to make sure that we’re building
products that customers trust and offering
them the most compelling reason to spend
their likely limited marketing budgets on
a quality domain name. Our business
building offerings, including websites,
email and commerce, combined with a pay
over time model for premium domains make
for a very compelling offering for anyone
looking to establish themselves online." |
We've
talked a lot about business but if you
really want
to get to know someone you need to
know what they love to do when they're not
in the office. One thing I already knew was that Paul
shares my love of the NFL's Tampa Bay
Buccaneers (DNJournal is based in
Tampa) - an affair that started for
him during his high school years when he
lived in Florida. In
the photo below you see the family catching
a Bucs game at Tampa's Raymond
James Stadium in 2008 (clockwise from Paul
at the top are wife Penny, youngest
son Parker and oldest son Paiden).
|
Football
is just scratching the surface for
Paul though. "I’m a big fan of
getting outdoors when possible, so hiking,
camping and summer sports like basketball,
pickle ball or golf all interest
me," he said. "I do
also enjoy reading in the evenings, with
Stephen King being my favorite go-to
author (recently finished Fairy Tale and
highly recommend it). Aside from my own
leisure pursuits, I have one son - Paiden
- who is a
Sophomore at Iowa State University, and
another - Parker - who is a Junior in High School,
both of whom are in various band programs
and activities that tend to fill up my
calendar quickly." |
Paul
teaching oldest son Paiden how to
fish in 2005. |
"One other interest of
mine that has been greatly enhanced by my
job and by being in this industry is travel. I’ve been fortunate enough to go
to conferences all around the US and the
rest of the world as well as visiting
GoDaddy offices spread around the globe. A
quote from Mark Twain hangs on my wall
(thanks to a very thoughtful gift from my
wife) that sums up my feelings well:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry
and narrow-mindedness, and many of our
people need it sorely on these accounts.
Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men
and things cannot be acquired by
vegetating in one little corner of the
earth all one’s lifetime.”
The
Mark Twain/Travel Photos wall collage that
hangs on Paul's office wall.
Paul personally shot each photo in his
travels around the world.
(Click
here or on photo to see a larger
version).
I
usually close an article with a comment or
two but, other than thanking Paul for his
time and insight, one thing I've learned as
a writer is that when Mark Twain is in
the house, the smartest thing you can do
is give him the last word!
|
