Jaffe and Stahura swap places and Donuts hires Chief Revenue Officer.
Paul Stahura has exited his role as CEO of new top level domain company Donuts, switching places with Bruce Jaffe, who was previously Executive Chairman of the company’s board.
“I’m really looking forward to the switcheroo and I think it’s a little bit overdue,” Stahura said.
Stahura (podcast) will be full-time Executive Chairman, working on thought leadership, Donuts Labs (finding new uses for domain names and DNS) and mergers and acquisitions. But he said it was time for him to move on and bring in someone with a different set of skills.
“Bruce is very articulate; I’m more of a startup person,” he said. He explained that he initially thought that Donuts would have 30 people. It’s now at 40 and might hit 50 this year. “It’s just not my forte.”
Jaffe said that replacing Stahura makes sense at this point in the company’s history.
“This is a natural evolution of the company,” Jaffe said. “Paul, as an entrepreneur, has founded and built companies and knows when it’s time to bring in a set of partners and managers to help scale the business and grow.”
Stahura said the company considered promoting one of the other three co-founders to the CEO position but decided against it.
“[The four co-founders] all have different talents and we thought bringing in someone from outside the industry who has different talents than any of the four of us would be most beneficial to the company,” Stahura said. “So it’s not like we didn’t consider it at all, but we think this is better for the company. We’re all major shareholders and we all thought that this was better for the company.”
Jaffe has been an independent board member for about a year but started to take on day-to-day responsibility at the company, working alongside Stahura.
“The founders have done a fantastic job of assembling a great portfolio of new TLDs,” Jaffe said. “My role is to help accelerate the growth, build the business, and team up the industry expertise that the founders bring with world class operators.”
One of those operators is John Pollard, who is joining as Chief Revenue Officer. Pollard will be responsible for sales & marketing, channel relationships, and other functions at the company. Donuts’ Chief Marketing Officer left last year and its Chicago office, which was responsible for marketing, shut down. One of Pollard’s responsibilities will be to rebuild the marketing function.
While there may be some overlap between Pollard’s role and that of co-founders Richard Tindal, Dan Schindler and Jon Nevett, the founders will all remain at the company.
“I wouldn’t have taken this job if any of the founders were leaving,” Pollard said.
For more on Donuts, read this profile.
Mark Thorpe says
If that’s not a huge red flag for new gTLD’s, I don’t know what is.
No co-founders as CEO either? Can you say buyout!
Step 5, acceptance.
That just put the final nail in the coffin for nTLD’s.IMO
Andrew Allemann says
I don’t think so. If Stahura were a first time entrepreneur I’d be concerned. But he’s had a big exit before. He’s the second largest shareholder. I suspect he was onboard with this.
Mark Thorpe says
Time will tell.
But i am looking at this outside and inside the box and it does not look good either way to me. Again, just my opinion.
Mason Cole says
Andrew is correct. Paul is very much on board.
Paul Stahura says
I, being an expert regarding the Donuts CEO’s thoughts and intentions, can confrim he was fully on board with this change.
Mark Thorpe says
It still does not change my opinion or outlook for nTLD’s as a whole.
Good luck with the transition, whatever it may be.
Andrew Allemann says
Many of my readers are experts about everything, Paul 🙂
Mark Thorpe says
Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Better to have blog readers now, than no readers at all someday.
Jimmy Hoffa says
I believe your comment is insulting for your readers, Andrew. And I don’t have to be an expert in any *logy fields to tell you this. Even though I do not comment around here, the thought that I could be considered one of those “many” if I would start expressing my opinions, disturbs me.
So, I’m now expressing my opinion. What kind of reader am I, Andrew?
Andrew Allemann says
You’re right, it was a snarky and unnecessary comment on my part.
Nick says
is this guy the miserable sore loser that is delaying the .web release with the frivolous lawsuits?
Ada says
Donuts even agreed before that they will not sue anyone.
Their words are not worth much and I am 100% sure they are really far from being profitable company. Actually every year is worse for them.
Andrew Allemann says
I think they’re very profitable operationally, hence allocating some of their cash to outside investments over the past year. I’m not sure how their outside investment is structured, but I believe they have a lot of venture debt. (Actually, they don’t have any debt. Sorry about that.)
Matt says
Based upon his track record so far, I suspect any change giving Paul more time to pursue new ideas will reap rewards sooner or later!
A Mitchell says
Domain investing as practiced by most of the small players in the industry is just rent seeking behavior. It’s largely speculative and doesn’t add value to the economy.
Donuts is contributing to the larger economy and to the ecosystem of the domain industry.
It will be great to see what they come up with next.