Replaces Paul Stahura as CEO of Donuts — Bruce Jaffe
Jaffe and Stahura swap places and Donuts hires Chief Revenue Officer.
Paul Stahura has exited his role as CEO of fresh top level domain firm Donuts, switching places with Bruce Jaffe, who was previously Executive Chairman of the firm’s board.
“I’m really looking forward to the switcheroo and I think it’s a little bit overdue,” Stahura stated.
Stahura (podcast) will be full-time Executive Chairman, working on thought leadership, Donuts Labs (finding fresh uses for domain names and DNS) and mergers and acquisitions. But he stated 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 stated. 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 stated that replacing Stahura makes sense at this point in the firm’s history.
“This is a natural evolution of the firm,” Jaffe stated. “Paul, as an entrepreneur, has founded and built firms and knows when it’s time to bring in a set of partners and managers to help scale the business and grow.”
Stahura stated the firm 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 firm,” Stahura stated. “So it’s not like we didn’t consider it at all, but we think this is better for the firm. We’re all major shareholders and we all thought that this was better for the firm.”
Jaffe has been an independent board member for regarding a year but started to take on day-to-day responsibility at the firm, working alongside Stahura.
“The founders have done a fantastic job of assembling a great portfolio of fresh TLDs,” Jaffe stated. “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 firm. 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 firm.
“I wouldn’t have taken this job if any of the founders were leaving,” Pollard stated.
For more on Donuts, read this profile.
