Why GoDaddy Billionaire Bob Parsons Gave Back His $8 Million PPP Loan

Having received a stimulus check for his many businesses—including a golf equipment company and Harley-Davidson dealerships—the serial entrepreneur explains his abrupt U-turn.

After stay-at-home orders led Bob Parsons to lay off 25 employees at his exclusive Scottsdale National Golf Club in March, the 69-year-old billionaire applied for a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan.

He received $8 million to spread out among his 16 businesses on April 13, 2020. But last week, the founder of domain-name registrar and Web hosting company GoDaddy had a change of heart and gave the money back to the federal government.

“There’s many other businesses that needed it more than we do, so we felt like it was only right to give it back” Parsons says. “It took a little soul-searching—that’s a sweet deal—but I’ve never been above doing the right thing, and that was the right thing.”

Initially, Parsons had planned on reducing his more than 900 employees “across the board” in mid-March. At that time, the value of his investments in his private hedge fund, YAM Investments, had dropped by $700 million. He says he was able to give the 25 people he laid off six weeks of severance. Though the pandemic has affected almost all of his diverse portfolio of businesses—including the largest Harley-Davidson dealership in North America and golf club maker Parsons Xtreme Golf (PXG)—Parsons says he hasn’t had to fire or furlough anyone since.

Was Parsons concerned about the backlash he would face as a billionaire asking for a federal handout? Maybe a little, he admits. But that was not the driving force for returning the PPP money, he insists. “It seems like we have all that cash, but we don’t,” he says. “We do, if our stocks were doing really good—then we could always borrow against the hedge fund. But when it’s dropping like that, you don’t want to borrow because you may lose it all.”

Bob Parsons knows what it’s like to have nothing. He grew up “poor as a church mouse” in inner-city Baltimore and struggled in school, flunking the fifth grade. After failing again in 12th grade, Parsons enlisted in the Marines and was sent to Vietnam at the height of the war. He received three medals during his tour, including the Purple Heart.

But it’s been a long time since Parsons has wanted for anything. Following his return from Vietnam, Parsons enrolled at the University of Baltimore and after graduating magna cum laude, he became a CPA and took a job at the computer firm Control Data. By 1984, he had launched his own software company, Parsons Technology, and sold it a decade later to Intuit for $64 million.

In 1997, Parsons was looking for his next act and founded Jomax Technologies, a Web design firm. Within a few years, he changed the name to GoDaddy and began selling domain names. Parsons sold the majority of GoDaddy, which became famous for its racy, often sexist, Super Bowl ads, to private equity investors in 2011. By Forbes’ estimate, Parsons pocketed roughly $900 million in cash at the time; he sold off the last of his shares in the now publicly traded company in 2018. Over the years, he’s started more than a dozen other entrepreneurial projects. He’s poured an estimated $600 million into commercial real estate in Arizona. In addition to the golf club, he currently owns shopping malls, the Harley dealerships, an ad agency, a film production company and PXG, among others.

Since the shutdown started, Parsons says his businesses have collectively lost $500 million in value. But he isn’t too worried.

“That’s where it is now, but as the country opens up, I expect things to start rocking and rolling because the economy has literally had a couple trillion dollars pumped into it,” Parsons says, speaking of the government’s $2 trillion stimulus package. “I’ve got to believe that’s going to help.”

In fact, Parsons says his hedge fund has bounced back since March and is currently down $400 million in value. To his surprise, many of his retail tenants have been able to pay rent. Now, he’s hiring 20 new employees at the Scottsdale National Golf Club. “I believe maybe in June, July or August, I’ll be back to where I was, if not better,” he says. “Don’t feel sorry for me—I’ll be back.”

Meanwhile, Parsons says he’s doing everything he can to protect his employees. In line with many other companies, he’s allowed many of his staff to work from home. For those who are unable to, he says he has hired nurses to stand at the entrances of all of his main facilities to take the temperature of everyone who enters. He’s also repurposed Spooky Fast, his Scottsdale, Arizona, motorcycle fabrication and customization company, to make hand sanitizer for his workforce.

GoDaddy

Parsons says he sometimes goes into his Scottsdale office himself to help out his skeleton crew. “It’s not like nuns in a Catholic school dance, where people are putting yardsticks between people,” he says. “It’s 6 feet [apart], and we wear masks. We have sanitizer all over.” 

One of his hardest-hit businesses is YAM Properties, his commercial real estate company. Among the tenants at his mixed-use properties in Arizona are Chase, Bed Bath & Beyond and AMC Theatres, and many others have had trouble paying rent, he says.

“We do everything we can to try not to be heartless. We believe people matter,” Parsons says. “We are trying to work with them as much as we can. [We ask], ‘What can you pay and when can you pay it?’ as opposed to, ‘We will shut you down.’ That’s not what we do.” He’s even been helping boost the business (and perhaps morale) of his tenants by organizing drive-in movie nights at two of his malls.

Another venture affected by coronavirus is Parsons’ charitable organization, the Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation, which donates to education, healthcare and veterans, among other causes. Since 2012, Parsons and his wife have given away more than $180 million to charities. In 2013, they signed the Giving Pledge, vowing to donate at least half of their fortune.

He says the foundation—which had $30 million in assets as of 2018—moves about $1 million to charities every two weeks, but this year, that may be hard to do. However, Parsons says he plans to honor the giving commitments he’s already made.

GoDaddy Story

Ever the warrior, Parsons also doesn’t believe coronavirus is as deadly as it has been made it out to be and suggests that the death toll numbers may be inflated. “Dying with COVID-19 from something else is very different than dying from COVID-19,” he says. “Many [deaths] were recorded as COVID-19. Now, I believe that was not the cause of death.” However, many experts, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci, disagree.

He is also pleased with the way Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, has handled the pandemic. Ducey allowed cosmetologists and barber shops to open on Friday, May 8, 2020, and restaurants and coffee shops to open with physical distancing measures on Monday, May 11, 2020. “I think the whole country should be opened up,” Parsons says.

In the meantime, he is looking forward to a return to normal life. He wants to hang out with his friends and have the freedom to go to a baseball game without the burden of personal protective equipment.

“Everybody is wearing a mask,” Parsons says. “It seems like every day is Halloween—with no treats.”