How Go Daddy got its name, its logo (and what they mean)

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Perhaps I've been asked this question as much or more than any other. So it's about time I stepped up and provided the answer. The story here is not nearly as glamorous as we'd like it to be, but it's a story nevertheless.

I founded the company back in 1997 and upon doing so I named it Jomax Technologies. I named it after Jomax Road, which was an old dirt road I passed on the drive to work.

Fast forward to 1999. We had our first product (the very first cut of WebSite Complete) developed and ready to take to market. At that time we found ourselves at the height of the dot com boom. The noise was loud, every stupid idea imaginable was getting all the money it wanted, everyone was giving everything away and it was next to impossible to stand out from the crowd.

The one thing we knew for sure was that no one would remember a name like Jomax Technologies. So we decided to dig in and try to come up with a better name. We worked for about a week and came up with nothing we liked. Then one day our new name literally fell out of the sky. Barbara Rechterman (my right hand person to this very day) and I were in my office. Someone said "How about Big Daddy?" A quick check revealed that it was taken. Then I said "How about Go Daddy?" And by golly, the name was available, so we bought it.

When we first bought the Go Daddy name we thought it might be a bit too silly to use for our name. But we told everyone (more as a tease than anything else) that "Go Daddy" was going to be our new name. We continued to look for a better name but found nothing. Meanwhile the staff, and anyone else who heard our funny new name, fell in love with "Go Daddy" and it stuck.

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. So we changed the name of the company to Go Daddy Software, Inc.

The next thing we needed was a logo. This story is a bit more interesting.

I called a designer friend of mine, named Connie, who lives in Iowa and hired her to create a logo to go with our new name. Over the next few weeks she sent us a number of preliminary designs, none of which we liked. One night she and her little daughter were playing on her computer and drawing various images. She thought that one of the creations they drew that night was fun so she sent it to us. What Connie and her little girl drew that night we now know as "The Go Daddy Guy" and after taking one look at it we knew that that would be our logo.

We probably get as much comment on "The Go Daddy Guy" as we do the "Go Daddy" name. Because the "The Go Daddy Guy" has a star on his head, and I wear a diamond earring, I'm often asked if the logo is supposed to be me. In response I say, "well I don't have orange wavy hair, don't own a pair of green sunglasses and I'm three dimensional." *grin* The Go Daddy Guy was never intended to be me.

So that's the story. Our name "Go Daddy" has no meaning other than we thought it was kind of fun. And our logo "The Go Daddy Guy" was born one night when a mom and her little girl were playing around doodling on their computer.