Alum brings passion for assisting entrepreneurs to GoDaddy
January 15, 2024
ALUMNI
Coming from a line of small business owners, Greg Efthimiou strives to give similar companies a competitive advantage. At GoDaddy, the nation’s largest website domain provider, the 1999 University of Richmond grad is connecting entrepreneurs with digital tools to grow their businesses.
Efthimiou’s grandfather was an entrepreneur who migrated from Greece in the early 1900s, and his father ran a maritime business that never employed more than six people.
“That gave me great exposure into what it takes to grow a thriving small business that becomes part of the fabric of a local community,” said Efthimiou, speaking from Charlotte, North Carolina, where he’s working remotely for the first time in his career. He joined GoDaddy in 2022 as vice president for public relations.
The company first came to the attention of much of the country when it ran Super Bowl ads featuring NASCAR driver Danica Patrick. It built a name around helping businesses open their digital front door, and now, 25 years later, GoDaddy has more than 20 million global customers.
In a strategic pivot in early 2023, the company’s CEO redirected the firm’s focus to AI-powered solutions. Today, within 5 minutes of a domain sale, GoDaddy can serve up dozens of services that help businesses grow and attract new customers. Those range from registering a corporation to crafting AI-powered marketing plans with automated social posts.
“What used to take months as businesses added product by product,” Efthimiou said, “we’re now rolling into one solution we deliver the moment a domain is purchased.”
Efthimiou said a small retailer now has the data and insights to more efficiently and effectively grow their business, the same information that big box retailers have leveraged for decades.
Efthimiou found his way to GoDaddy after communications leadership roles at Honeywell and Bank of America Merchant Services. The married father of three is rooted in Charlotte, where his outside interests include serving Special Olympics.
Consistently pressed on the job to meet reporters’ deadlines, Efthimiou is grateful for Jepson’s flexibility with its own deadlines. After all, he walked into the associate dean’s office two weeks after the application deadline to ask about becoming a leadership major.
“And it was one of the best things to ever happen to me,” said Efthimiou, who is a member of Jepson’s Executive Board of Advisors. “It granted me the space to be intellectually curious about the application of leadership across so many disciplines. That has served as jet fuel throughout my career to be good at the skills that I’ve been given but also to be interested and open to learning about other aspects of business and interpersonal dynamics.”
Efthimiou’s grandfather was an entrepreneur who migrated from Greece in the early 1900s, and his father ran a maritime business that never employed more than six people.
“That gave me great exposure into what it takes to grow a thriving small business that becomes part of the fabric of a local community,” said Efthimiou, speaking from Charlotte, North Carolina, where he’s working remotely for the first time in his career. He joined GoDaddy in 2022 as vice president for public relations.
The company first came to the attention of much of the country when it ran Super Bowl ads featuring NASCAR driver Danica Patrick. It built a name around helping businesses open their digital front door, and now, 25 years later, GoDaddy has more than 20 million global customers.
In a strategic pivot in early 2023, the company’s CEO redirected the firm’s focus to AI-powered solutions. Today, within 5 minutes of a domain sale, GoDaddy can serve up dozens of services that help businesses grow and attract new customers. Those range from registering a corporation to crafting AI-powered marketing plans with automated social posts.
“What used to take months as businesses added product by product,” Efthimiou said, “we’re now rolling into one solution we deliver the moment a domain is purchased.”
Efthimiou said a small retailer now has the data and insights to more efficiently and effectively grow their business, the same information that big box retailers have leveraged for decades.
Efthimiou found his way to GoDaddy after communications leadership roles at Honeywell and Bank of America Merchant Services. The married father of three is rooted in Charlotte, where his outside interests include serving Special Olympics.
Consistently pressed on the job to meet reporters’ deadlines, Efthimiou is grateful for Jepson’s flexibility with its own deadlines. After all, he walked into the associate dean’s office two weeks after the application deadline to ask about becoming a leadership major.
“And it was one of the best things to ever happen to me,” said Efthimiou, who is a member of Jepson’s Executive Board of Advisors. “It granted me the space to be intellectually curious about the application of leadership across so many disciplines. That has served as jet fuel throughout my career to be good at the skills that I’ve been given but also to be interested and open to learning about other aspects of business and interpersonal dynamics.”