Blake Irving

Blake Irving

Blake Irving is the CEO and Board Director of GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain name provider and web host. Under Mr. Irving’s direction, the company has sharpened its focus on helping the world’s 200 million small, independent ventures to grow and thrive online—utilizing a unified platform that powers their digital presence, communications, marketing, commerce, back-office administration and peer/community support.

Prior to Go Daddy, Mr. Irving was EVP and Chief Product Officer at Yahoo!, a role in which he grew active users from 550 million to nearly one billion users—positioning Yahoo! to surpass Google and Facebook as the world’s most popular online destination today.

Before Yahoo!, Mr. Irving spent 15 years at Microsoft in various senior roles, most recently as Corporate Vice President of the Windows Live Platform where he was responsible for research, development and operations of Microsoft’s global cloud services. While at Microsoft, Mr. Irving created and grew MSN Messenger into the world’s most successful instant messaging platform with more than 70% global share, re-architected and grew Hotmail to 270 million users worldwide, and deployed their first billion dollar advertising system, adExpert.

A technology pioneer for more than 30 years, Mr. Irving began his career at Xerox in 1981 during the heyday of PARC labs. He has since been at the forefront of innovation, having been involved in numerous products and services that are now staples of the internet, including typography, communications on the personal computer, subscription services, online advertising and global-scale services platforms known collectively today as “the cloud.”

Mr. Irving is a graduate of San Diego State University and received an MBA degree from Pepperdine University, where he later served as a professor of business in the same graduate school. He currently resides in San Luis Obispo, CA. with his wife and two sons.