Bob Parsons is best known as an entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is also a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Fire in the Hole!, the story of his traumatic, hilarious life and explosive success. He is the CEO and founder of YAM Worldwide, a family of companies spanning golf, motorcycles, real estate, finance, marketing, innovation, and philanthropy, including PXG (Parsons Xtreme Golf), Scottsdale National Golf Club, GO AZ Motorcycles, Harley-Davidson of Scottsdale, and YAM Properties. 

Parsons was born to a lower, middle-class, blue-collar family in East Baltimore.  Money was scarce during Bob’s formative years, mostly due to both his parents being compulsive gamblers and neither being very good at it.

Not an early bloomer, Parsons failed the fifth grade and would have failed his senior year in high school had he not enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1968. After showing all his teachers his orders to report to Parris Island for boot camp, they all gave him passing grades.

Parsons is a U.S. Marine Corps Vietnam War veteran who served as an 0311 rifleman. He received the Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, and Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

Parsons put himself through college on the G.I. Bill, graduating magna cum laude from the University of Baltimore. He later received both an honorary doctorate and the Distinguished Entrepreneur Award from his alma mater.

After college Parsons became a CPA and a PC enthusiast, teaching himself to program microcomputers using a book he bought at the Stanford University bookstore. Using this knowledge, Parsons, a serial entrepreneur, started his first business, Parsons Technology, to sell financial software he wrote himself. He invested $40,000 in Parsons Technology and later sold it for $64 million dollars in 1994. In 1997, Parsons started GoDaddy.com which became the world’s largest domain name registrar. Parsons sold 71% of GoDaddy in 2011 for $2.3 billion dollars. 

After launching Parsons Technology from his basement, and later GoDaddy, he turned his focus to building new ventures, including PXG now a global golf brand. All three of Parsons’ significant new ventures debuted on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing companies: Parsons Technology debuted at No.11 in 1992, GoDaddy joined the list at No. 8 in 2004, and PXG ranked No. 123 in 2019.

In 2012, he and his wife, Renee, founded The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation to provide transformational grants for marginalized populations and support underfunded causes in homelessness, medical care, youth, education, and the needs of injured military veterans and military families.

Parsons says The Marine Corps deserves credit for everything he’s ever accomplished.