Blake Irving

Blake Irving
Irving (fourth from left) at the MSN Launch Party, 2004
Born	(1959-08-08) August 8, 1959 (age 57)
Residence	San Luis Obispo, California
Education	MBA
Alma mater	Pepperdine University
Occupation	GoDaddy CEO
Employer	GoDaddy

Blake Irving is the Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of the GoDaddy group of companies, which provide web services. Before coming to GoDaddy in 2013, Blake served Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Yahoo!. Before Yahoo!, Blake spent 15 years at Microsoft creating consumer products, like NetMeeting and MSN Messenger, and expanding Hotmail.

Blake Irving was born on August 8, 1959, to James Scott Irving and Patricia Ann Irving in Ohio. Irving’s parents had met in the Los Angeles, California area. Both were involved in the jazz music scene while Jim attended school at UCLA. Patty worked at Rand Corporation and put Jim through law school. As a child, Irving's father was in the FBI and consequently moved the family around the country. Irving lived with his brother, Scott, and his sisters, Lisa and Lori.

Blake continued to play drums and create art through High School in Southern California, playing in high school bands, jazz quartets, big bands, college bands and competing in Percussive Arts Society (PAS) competitions in jazz and rudimental drumming. Blake also privately taught music lessons, as well as wrote music for high school drum lines. Following his parents’ path of “music as avocation,” in 1977 Blake attended Cal State Northridge as a business major. He quickly changed to art with a focus on typography and continued to play in jazz bands. He is a graduate of San Diego State University and received an MBA degree from Pepperdine University.

Irving started his professional career at Xerox. In 1980 during his Junior year, he was asked to interview and took employment at Xerox Corporation where they had formed an early digital typography group called “The Font Center” as a Digital Typographer. Irving was a part of the team in the early PARC days of WYSIWIG, where he was designing early display and printer fonts. During his time at Xerox he was involved in numerous products and services including: typography, communications on the personal computer, subscription services and back end online advertising. Within Xerox, Blake transitioned from designing fonts for displays and printers to working as a PM on printers, then multimedia PCs. After receiving his MBA and receiving the Chairman’s award for innovation at Xerox, Irving took a role at Okidata in Mt Laurel New Jersey as a product manager. Blake left Okidata after receiving a strong offer from Compaq computer one year later. Blake was originally recruited to Compaq to start their printer group but a financial downturn moved Irving to their multimedia group instead.