I’m Gabe Mays, Head of WordPress @ GoDaddy. Ask Me Anything!
Hey everyone! My name is Gabriel A. Mays and I’m the Head of WordPress at GoDaddy.
What I Do
My role involves everything from leading our WordPress products and strategy to identifying acquisition opportunities, managing partnerships, hiring new WordPress team members, evangelizing WordPress inside the company and helping GoDaddy be a better member of the WordPress community.
My Background
Like most WordPress folks, I have an unconventional background. Previously, I was a Captain in the Marine Corps. A combat veteran, I spent two years between Iraq and Afghanistan operating on small, embedded teams. While in the Marine Corps I met my wife, who’s still an active duty Marine F/A-18 aviator and just finished two years as #8 on the Blue Angels.
I discovered WordPress almost 10 years ago after trying just about everything else building sites for myself and others. On my last 12-month deployment to Afghanistan I spent my free time learning about business, startups and teaching myself to be a better developer.
I learn by doing, so while deployed I decided to build a SaaS product that abstracted the complexity to give small businesses beautiful, fully functional websites in 60 seconds. Further, it’d integrate with hundreds of other apps to automate business processes. For example, when a customer submits a form it’d automatically create an invoice, schedule an appointment, add the customer to an email newsletter and CRM, send a text message summary, etc. The idea was to give businesses more than a website, they’d also get a way to automate their business.
This was challenging to do working from a tent in Afghanistan with limited internet connectivity on an old $300 duct-taped laptop. But it didn’t matter, during the process I fell in love with building products, strategy and WordPress–there was nothing else I’d rather be doing. Halfway through that 12-month deployment I knew what I wanted to do next: leave the Marine Corps and build products that help people leverage WordPress to build businesses as great as their ambitions.
I launched the startup shortly after returning from deployment and soon had my first customers. After attending a Y Combinator startup event I met one of the partners from Google Ventures who became a mentor. I decided against seeking funding, but through connections I eventually met Jeff King, SVP of Hosting at GoDaddy.
At that time, I felt the same way about GoDaddy that many WordPress folks used to, but decided to give it a chance after learning about the new leadership team. I was impressed, they “got it” and were investing heavily to turn things around, so I agreed to do a product demo and stayed in contact with the team.
Over the next two years my startup spun off a new product targeted at high end real estate investors (also on WordPress) in addition to the existing product for small businesses. It was fun, but exhausting. We didn’t hire fast enough (we were self-funded) or iterate fast enough. We remained profitable, but our opportunity to be a dominant player faded.
In late 2014 my wife joined the Blue Angels as #8 where she’d be traveling 300 days a year doing airshows for the 2015-2016 seasons. This inspired me to take advantage of the opportunity to try something new. Around the same time GoDaddy was looking for someone to lead WordPress and I accepted.
A year later, here I am. I absolutely love what I do and I’m incredibly proud of what the team has accomplished in the last year. We still have a lot of work to do to give the WordPress community the amazing experience it deserves and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be part of it.
I look forward to answering your questions and meeting you at the next WordCamp or Meetup. You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielmays and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gabriel.mays.
Thanks,
Gabe
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/13979/i-m-gabe-mays-head-of-wordpress-godaddy-ask-me-anything
source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2016/12/07/im-gabe-mays-head-of-wordpress-godaddy-ask-me-anything/