Happy 2012! Lets talk about some companies that are ripe for disruption this year. Below are 5 companies that I think are at serious risk of being unseated from their top positions in the near future. If you’re looking for ideas for a new startup, or wanting to know what startups you should be looking to join, consider these as trend lines to jump on.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy has been the big-daddy of domain registration for years, aided by obnoxious and tactless super bowl ads which, despite all due criticism, made GoDaddy the registrar who everyone had heard of, and which many people used. They’re like the Wal-Mart of domains and hosting – if you only care about price, GoDaddy has been the go-to registrar.
They’re at the top of my list of companies itching for a takedown right now because of the recent dust up over their support for SOPA, and the ensuing exodus of domains from tech-savvy customers, but GoDaddy has been on my radar for years because of their horrible user experience. Something as simple as purchasing a single domain name turns into a dozen-page nightmare of confusing forms, aggressive add-ons and upsells designed to trick users into buying things they don’t need, and a miserable interface that would make Gandhi want to stab someone in the face. After you’ve registered that domain, managing it is often just as difficult, and despite being a relative pro when it comes to these things, I’ve had to call their phone support multiple times to figure out how to change something. God help you if you have other services with them as well.
SOPA issues aside, and those are certainly valid, GoDaddy has a huge vulnerability when it comes to user experience. Whoever comes up with a “mint for domains” will win a lot of converts, even if the price is slightly higher. I moved most of my domains out a year or so ago after being fed up with GoDaddy’s nightmare of a site, but I have yet to see someone really do it right yet. I expect soon I will. The reality is that domains and hosting and other services once the domain of the tech elite are now being sought by the mainstream, and the experience for purchasing and managing them needs to be updated accordingly.