Parsons joined the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and received the Combat Action Ribbon, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and a Purple Heart Medal. Upon his return, Parsons enrolled in the University of Baltimore where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting. He is a Certified Public Accountant.
A serial entrepreneur, Parsons' first endeavor was Parsons Technology, a software company he started in his basement in 1984, after teaching himself how to write computer programs. After creating the company's initial software, MoneyCounts and Personal Tax Edge, Parsons used direct mail marketing to sell these and subsequent products.
When Parsons Technology was sold to Intuit, Inc. in 1994 for $64 million dollars, the company had nearly 1,000 employees, $100 million in annual revenue and three million customers. At the time, Parsons Technology sold more than 100 products, was releasing a new product or significant product upgrade every six days, and was sending more than six million pieces of direct marketing mail each month.
In 1997, Parsons started Jomax Technologies, using funds from the sale of Parsons Technology. He renamed the company Go Daddy in 1999.
Throughout his entrepreneurial career, Parsons' business philosophy has been to create low-priced, feature-rich products combined with the highest levels of customer service. This philosophy has fueled Go Daddy's growth, leading it to become the No. 1 registrar worldwide, both in terms of new registrations and domains under management.
Go Daddy currently registers, renews or transfers a domain name every second, has more than 11 million customers worldwide, manages more than 55 million domain names and employs more than 3,400 people. Most of the applications sold on GoDaddy.com are developed in-house and none of its customer support is offshored.
Go Daddy is based in Scottsdale, and has offices throughout Arizona, and in California, Colorado, Iowa and Canada. It operates data center facilities across North America, as well as in Europe and Asia, and most recently opened a care center in India to service customers there in their native languages.
Parsons is an award-winning business leader. In 2007, he was named Arizona's Business Leader-of-the-Year. In 2008, Parsons was presented with an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters by his alma mater, the University of Baltimore. In 2010, he was honored as The University of Baltimore Distinguished Entrepreneur. In March 2011, Parsons received the Celebrity Fight Night Muhammad Ali Entrepreneur Award.
In 2012, Parsons and his wife Renee created The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation. Its mission is to inspire hope by providing critical funding at critical times to communities striving to make a difference. The Southwest Center for HIV/AIDS, in Phoenix, was immediately given a $5 million donation. Parsons also donated $1 million to his alma mater to establish the University of Baltimore's "Bob 'Go Daddy' Parsons' Professorship of Digital Communication, Commerce and Culture."
Parsons also works to help aspiring entrepreneurs with his video blog, www.BobParsons.me, where he also offers his "16 Rules" for life and business. You can follow @DrBobParsons on Twitter.