I wish people stopped talking dirt about these guys and their IPO. Investors aren't being forced to buy the stock, consumers aren't being forced to buy groupons and merchants aren't certainly being forced to participate in their program.
While Lefkofsky is selling his stock at will, you should note that the CEO is holding on to most of his portion of the company.
Everybody and their cousin worries about their expenses, and that is totally understandable, but let us not forget how many acquisitions they have made in the past. If most of the money they have raised went into founders' pockets, then most of the income they have made went into buying other sizeable companies and paying some 7000 employees.
There are 15M small businesses in the US. Groupon made nearly $3B last year servicing only less than half a percent of those. For better or for worse, Groupon could be bigger than Google and turn a solid profit.
I think that investors should be informed about Groupon and its founders. It is especially important if there are issues with Groupon and its founders.
I was actually quite impressed with Groupon initially until I saw its numbers and that its major stockholders were cashing out hundreds of millions of dollars in stock pre-IPO. That raised with me huge alarm bells and it changed my opinion drastically.
My extreme leariness of Groupon is based on facts that I've learned as I used to be a fan, although a relatively uninformed one.
Every comment this account has made had been related to groupon. I think the tech giants are out bastetdize its IPO. The company is a top line revenue behemoth, unlike LinkedIn. Seems to have a lot of potential if they increase profit margins. A lot.
It appears that you are strongly implying that I am part of a conspiracy. Can you outline in more detail this conspiracy that you believe I am involved in?
Are Groupon users loyal to Groupon, or do they also use other email list coupon sites? I ask because if the answer is "no", I'm not seeing how Groupon can be that big at all. Google brought something to the table that others could not; Groupon clearly doesn't. Groupon only has on it's competition a small head-start in sales reach. Unless they can some how get exclusivity on small businesses, they aren't doing anything noteworthy not also being done by Living Social or Google or Facebook.
While Lefkofsky is selling his stock at will, you should note that the CEO is holding on to most of his portion of the company.
Everybody and their cousin worries about their expenses, and that is totally understandable, but let us not forget how many acquisitions they have made in the past. If most of the money they have raised went into founders' pockets, then most of the income they have made went into buying other sizeable companies and paying some 7000 employees.
There are 15M small businesses in the US. Groupon made nearly $3B last year servicing only less than half a percent of those. For better or for worse, Groupon could be bigger than Google and turn a solid profit.