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Go Daddy Escalates Corporate & Product Development Focus

[December 17, 2012]

Go Daddy Escalates Corporate & Product Development Focus

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. --(Business Wire)--

Go Daddy, a one-stop shop for small businesses to leverage the power of the Internet, has hired two new executives to boost expansion around technology partners and products. Go Daddy has hired David Popowitz as its first Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Raj Mukherjee as Vice President and General Manager of its Site Builder Product line.

Popowitz leads Go Daddy's effort to acquire and partner with companies that offer best-in-class products and services which enhance the customer experience and their success. Mukherjee is leveraging his past SMB experience to bolster Go Daddy's already feature-rich Website Builder and other related products.

Both Popowitz and Mukherjee are based in Go Daddy's new Mountain View, California office.

"Go Daddy has grown to be a billion dollar business, almost exclusively through organic development which is truly amazing," said Popowitz. "Now, in the next chapter of Go Daddy's growth story, the company is well-positioned to leverage its scale, technology and brand to expand further through partnerships and acquisitions aimed at helping small businesses succeed online."

Go Daddy has a successful track record with strategic acquisitions. Its acquired assets, in aggregate, represent in excess of $100 million in revenues.

In July, Go Daddy acquired Outright.com, a cloud-based financial management application company based in Silicon Valley. Outright.com connects business owners to their finances from anywhere, allowing businesses to easily handle bookkeeping, by delivering real-time financial updates.

Mukherjee led Google's (News - Alert) SMB application business, which is a natural fit for Go Daddy's 7 million-plus small business customers. "Go Daddy has already helped millions upon millions of customers thrive online," Mukherjee said. "Go Daddy's premise is simple - give small businesses the tools they need to succeed online - while keeping services time-efficient and easy-to-use. Now, we're going to accelerate our product evolution process in order to keep growing with our customers' needs worldwide."

Mukherjee and Popowitz are both on board to fuel Go Daddy's ongoing expansion, which has been underway for months now. In November, Go Daddy partnered with DudaMobile to launch mobile Website Builder, a service that automates the integration of Web and mobile sites to save businesses time and expand their customer reach. As part of the recent Go Daddy Website Builder product launch, more than 700,000 mobile optimized sites were enabled, catapulting Go Daddy to be one of the largest mobile website hosting companies in the world.

"Go Daddy's plan is to evolve our website building technology and to acquire and partner with companies in ways that help us improve the quality, simplicity and range of services we provide our customers," said Go Daddy Interim CEO Scott Wagner. "David Popowitz and Raj Mukherjee bring a diverse set of skills, experience and expertise to lead this next, exciting phase."

Prior to joining Go Daddy, Popowitz was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and most recently Credit Suisse where he led the Technology Investment Banking Group. Over 18 years, Popowitz advised some of the leading technology companies on strategic and financial matters, with a focus on software, SaaS (News - Alert), Internet and communications companies. Last year, Popowitz was SVP of Finance at RingCentral, a privately-held, SaaS company providing hosted PBX (News - Alert) for small businesses. Popowitz is also an active angel investor and advisor to start-ups. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and Bachelor of Arts from Brown University.

Mukherjee has a long history with Google and Microsoft (News - Alert), helping shape major products offerings - most recently Google Apps and Office 365, respectively. He has more than a decade of experience in creating and developing software. Mukherjee is working on his dual MBA from Columbia University Business School, New York & Haas School of Business at California, Berkeley. He graduated from Jadavpur University in India with honors, studying Computer Science & Engineering.

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About Go Daddy

Go Daddy is the world's largest domain name provider, Web hosting provider and new SSL certificate provider, focused on helping small businesses grow larger. Go Daddy provides dozens of cloud-based services and is the largest worldwide mass-market hosting provider by annual revenue according to 451 Research (Mass-Market Hosting Report-Fall 2012) and is the #1 provider of net-new SSL certificates for 2011, according to the Netcraft, LTD Secure Server Survey. To learn more about the company, visit www.GoDaddy.com/PR.

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