Scott Wagner Joins GoDaddy As COO, CFO

GoDaddy formally announced its new Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Scott Wagner, effective immediately. Wagner was a KKR Capstone Member and the leader of KKR’s portfolio operations team in North America, who stepped in as GoDaddy’s interim CEO last summer. Wagner began working with GoDaddy a short time after KKR, Silver Lake Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures made strategic investments in the company in 2011.

“It’s not often you see an operator of Scott’s caliber and experience elect to join the portfolio company he was ‘dropped in’ to assist,” said Blake Irving, who became GoDaddy’s CEO in January. “Scott really kick-started our transformation back in July. He’s helped to develop our strategy and mature our operations – and he shares our passion to change the world for small business. Scott’s decision to join us speaks to both the power of our opportunity at GoDaddy and our people. There’s no better sign of confidence than to join full-time. This absolutely accelerates the phenomenal momentum we’ve created together.”

“It’s pretty simple. I believe in this company and what it can be – this is truly a rare opportunity to build a top-tier Internet company. Blake is an A-plus technology executive, a focused leader and a great guy to boot,” said Scott Wagner. “The overall GoDaddy team is terrific, and we’re building momentum month-to-month. I’m in it for the long haul and energized to be a part of it!”

Since Irving took over as GoDaddy CEO, he has opened offices in Sunnyvale, California and near Seattle, Washington. Irving has also had enormous success with recruiting top-tier tech talent in what is a highly competitive hiring climate. Notable hires include CTO and EVP Platforms Elissa Murphy, who joined from Yahoo! and previously worked at Microsoft; Chief Architect Arnold Blinn, a 17-year Microsoft veteran; SVP International James Carroll, a former executive at Yahoo! and GM at Microsoft; EVP eCommerce Phil Bienert, a former AT&T executive; SVP and GM Hosting Jeff King, who is a 17-year veteran in online commerce, most recently with eBay; SVP Design and User Experience Rick Eames, who worked at both Apple and Microsoft; SVP Vertical Marketing Bob Lund, a former executive with Hewlett Packard; SVP Corporate Development David Popowitz, a former head of Credit Suisse Technology Banking; as well as, VP and GM Site Builder Products Raj Mukherjee, formerly of Google.

Wagner had served KKR for 13 years, working with its portfolio companies as both an advisor and stand-in executive with a particular focus on technology, media and payments. Under his watch as interim CEO from July 2012 to January 2013, GoDaddy launched new products for customers, such as mobile websites and Reseller Hosting and opened an office in Hyderabad, India to serve customers there.

GoDaddy sales hit nearly $1.3 billion last year. The company now serves more than 11 million paying customers worldwide and is the largest Web hosting and domain name registrar on the planet. GoDaddy leverages its award-winning talent and personalized service approach to help small businesses create their digital identity, build websites and harness the power of the Internet.

GoDaddy was honored in the 2012 Fortune magazine’s Best Companies to Work For list and has also been recognized for dozens of other national and local employment awards recently, including Alfred P. Sloan’s Flexible Workplace (6 years) and Valley’s Best Places to Work (9 consecutive years).

GoDaddy has offices throughout Arizona and in Sunnyvale, Calif.; Denver, Colo.; Kirkland/Bellevue, Wash.; Washington, D.C. and Hiawatha, Iowa; as well as The Netherlands, India and Singapore.