As we head into the last viable week of Internet Christmas shopping, we thought this would be the perfect time to look at a few companies with Maryland connections who have had a major impact on the Internet.
The first company is Bill Me Later, the online purchase processing company that was bought by PayPal two years ago. Bill Me Later was founded in Timonium by Mark Lavelle and Gary Marino, two veterans of the credit card processing business. Both founders currently hold senior executive positions with PayPal. Mr. Lavelle is Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, and now works out of PayPal's San Jose, California offices. Mr. Marino still braves the cold and snow of winter with the rest of us. As Senior Vice President of Credit Products and Risk, he is still based in Timonium.
Next up is Sergey Brin. Before Sergey headed off to sunny California to pursue his post-graduate studies at Stanford, and met fellow Google founder Larry Page, he earned his undergraduate degree down the road in College Park. Brin spent most of his childhood growing up in Maryland's D.C. suburbs after his father Michael moved the family to the United States from Russia. The elder Brin settled into a position as a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland. While his son continues to steer one of the world's largest companies, Michael Brin still continues his work as an educator at College Park.
The third person on our list is perhaps the most colorful. He is also the only one with solid Baltimore roots, and the only person to our knowledge who realized you could use sex to sell something as boring as domain registrations. We are speaking of course, of GoDaddy founder and CEO, Bob Parsons. Born and raised in the blue collar enclave of East Baltimore, Mr. Parsons joined the Marines after high school, and did a tour in Vietnam. Upon returning to Baltimore, he enrolled at the University of Baltimore, where he received his accounting degree.
A self taught programmer, Mr. Parsons created two accounting based software packages, MoneyCounts and Personal Tax Edge under the moniker Parsons Technology. He sold Parsons Technology to Intuit in 1994 for $64 million. Using the proceeds from that sale, he founded Jomax Technologies in 1997, then renamed it GoDaddy in 1999.
Today, GoDaddy is the largest ICANN accredited domain registrar on the planet. The company has also branched out into website and email account hosting, as well as issuing SSL certificates.
Yet perhaps GoDaddy's most enduring claim will be their annual battles with network censors. Every year, GoDaddy submits a number of commercial spots it hopes to air during the Super Bowl, and every year, most are rejected for their racy content. Not to worry. GoDaddy posts the rejected spots on their website for all to see, and let's you be the judge. Now, that's marketing.
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