GoDaddy’s IPO is a success by just about any standard. Yesterday’s IPO price of $20 per share was eagerly welcomed by the market, which proceeded to bid up the price 31% in the first day of trading. [NASDAQ GDDY]

For investors, the big plusses are: strength of the brand; the large customer base of nearly 13 million (mostly SMBs); and robust growth in revenues and customers. Evidently, these outweighed the negatives of: lack of profitability; balance sheet challenges; and assorted bumps in the road over the last 10 years.

From a strategic perspective, the big challenge for GoDaddy (and other providers of registration and related products to low-end SMBs) is selling more and higher-priced products into a highly price-sensitive customer base. Moving customers along the value-vector into higher-priced, more robust products, while staying in a DIY/low cost pricing zone, is a challenging balancing act.

We think Go Daddy is well aware of the endgame, and knows it will take a lot more than Danica Patrick running NASCAR laps to get there.