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Groupon Still Losing Money, CEO Is Fired And Leaks Final Email
New submitter Inzkeeper writes with news that the CEO of Groupon met the axe today: "Groupon CEO Andrew Mason made public an email he sent to Groupon employees. He takes responsibility for the company's downturn, expresses his appreciation for his staff, and wishes them well. 'For those who are concerned about me, please don't be — I love Groupon, and I'm terribly proud of what we've created. I'm OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through.'"
Despite increased revenues, they are still losing about $81 million each quarter, and Wall Street needs blood.
I bet most stopped right there.
Blech. Signatures.
You need to be big like Amazon to lose money like that.
Is this some sort of advertisement for Gametop?
There's a company that pumped the highest profit in a quarter without pumping oil. Massive cash pile, no debt. And Wall Street continues to punish it. Wall Street wants bloods.
I nominate this for nerd meme of 2013. If slashdot was battletoads. If the republican national convention was battletoads. If shopping at Wal-Mart was battletoads. And then all those of us who never played it will have to make friends with gamefaqs all over again to understand WTF everyone is talking about.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
2 years ago Google offered $5B to $6B to buy Groupon. Groupon turned them down and today their market cap is $3B. Oops.
I hope the company that managed the takes the credibility hit it deserves.
Despite increased revenues, they are still losing about $81 million each quarter, and Wall Street needs blood.
This company has always been a sham. There aren't enough new businesses able to soak up the cost of all the free-riders who use is coupon model as aan imainery marketing opportunity to keep Groupon alive long enough to make it to profitability and keep it there. It's stock price has been a wonderful short sale opportunity since say one. The fact that anyone was convince to believe otherwise is a testimony to the magnitude of the ignorance upon which Wall Street constructed the real estate backed investment banking scam of the century.
Of course investors want a (blood) pay-off. Why else do you think they bought the stock to begin with? When the actual truth behind a comany whose expenses continue to rise faster than its revenue, what else would you expect? Groupon's fraudulent (but legal while it was private) accounting practices weren't corrected until after it went public, and the first thing that happened after that was the stock tanked by about 50%.
.. does this mean that everybody's caught on to their predatory business model?
I've always hated him, but I'll go to his funeral just to make sure he's really dead.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If the Battletoads analogy is accurate, this man is my hero. That game was fucking tough.
Whats Groupon?
I have a theory of what the CEO was doing instead of fixing up Groupon.
Now own up, who googled Battletoads?
Let's see, a company who cons small business into bad decisions by taking advantage of their inability to quickly do an ROI and assess risk, is themselves falling ill to their unmitigated growth and overhead.
How much could it cost to run a company that just sells coupons?
That's a classy (nerdy) way to go out! To lend weight to the Battletoads analogy, Terra Tubes is level 9 and this is level 3. As you'll see it is nearly impossible to succeed without knowing what is ahead of you. Normally you would have to fail many times before you learned enough about the upcoming obstacles to get through.
He is Oklahoma with having failed?
My search-fu is down at the moment, but iirc Google made an offer to buy them, why would they decline if they're in such dire straights?
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
this is one of those 'take your controller out of the NES socket and throw it across the room' hard.
Goddammit! Stop it! You hear me? Just stop it!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm in.
If Microsoft was Battletoads, it would be like the rat army working for a chair-throwing Big Blag.
Or maybe I'm that sad that I knew exactly where he got to. My question for him is if he used the warps? Ah, nevermind. Even if he did warp this is quite the impossible feat to get to the first time you play Battletoads.
Go get yourselves an emulator and try to get out of the second area let alone to the Terra Tubes.
Groupon = Cyberrebate
My brother and I spent hours playing this game on NES. One of the things that made it so hard was no saves -- something that my brother and I would enforce on Halo in legendary mode when we got older. The hover motorcycles were fun; the art was intriguing. It was an amazing game and probably the most fun I've had with co-op. I don't know why they never tired to recreate this -- as long as it remains in 2D instead of 3D.
As far as the Groupon thing, I don't have much sympathy. I have a few entrepreneur friends. Groupon "recruiters" have harassed all of them relentlessly, while exclaiming that their competitors would get an upper hand from it. However, in reality, Groupon is pretty shit for small businesses. For big businesses, it probably is good since they have a lot of money to throw around, but then this screws over small businesses even more. I'm not spouting out theory; I've had actual friends affected by this. I never use Groupon unless I know that there's not a local small business competitor in the area, but I admit that this probably ruins it for entrepreneurs thinking about starting a new small business in the area.
The G
If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through.
It is just like that especially if the consequences for dying in battletoads was losing $81 million each quarter. Usually when stakes are high, you don't get someone who's playing the game for the first time to be in charge.
I unsubscribed from all future emails from Groupon yesterday. Pretty sure that was the straw that broke the camels back for him.
I played the Game Boy version as a kid on a yellow/green GB, the memories and trauma runs deep.
I only made it to the third level (the one after bike level, oh the nightmares) twice (or three times).
So yeah. My nerd cred is still intact,
(for those not in the know, the original Battletoads is arguably one of the most unfairly hard games ever made, next to Ghouls'n'Ghosts and ilk. except more unfair) (also Takeshi's Challenge does not count, for it was just a troll)
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
talking about quarters the arcade ver was better and had kick ass music from the BSMT2000 chip.
I nominate this for nerd meme of 2013. If slashdot was battletoads. If the republican national convention was battletoads. If shopping at Wal-Mart was battletoads. And then all those of us who never played it will have to make friends with gamefaqs all over again to understand WTF everyone is talking about.
If this new meme you are pushing were battletoads, it would have crashed at the load screen.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
the only reviews I have ever read by businesses for groupon have been that they lose huge amounts of money if they use the service. How can groupon losing money be a surprise?
how much money did you take home after taxes for your "failed" year in 2012? After answering the question, remind me why I should be concerned about you.
End Of File.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
has greatly helped their profits!
Here is what's wrong with business today.
How can Groupon lose $81 million every three months and still be in business? Where is the money coming from to pay the bills?
I started a business a year ago and have been profitable, and grown consistently, every month. And yet, not a single bank will talk to me about a loan to expand.
I guess I need to lose some big money before they'll talk to me...
So now they care about profits? How is it that a company with huge profits and cash on hand like Apple can be worth 60% or so less than a few months ago compared to a company like Amazon that consistently takes quarterly losses and is at the peak of their stock value?
Google has enough market power to make it work. If Google had bought Groupon, it would be called "Google Deals" and would appear at the top of every search result page vaguely relevant to the query. It would be tied into Google Groups, Google Maps, Google+, Google Chrome, and Google Anal Probe. Businesses would sign up or else.
See with a buyout offer, there's a lot too it. It isn't like when Google says "We'll give you $6 billion," that is final, that if Groupon says "Ok," Google has to hand over a check and it is done. No, rather it is the first step. Next step is the lawyers get together to draft some NDA type stuff, and then Google gets to go over what happens in the company. They get to look at the financials, the operations, all that shit. They get to have a real good look at what they are going to buy. Only if they are then happy, does it go on to a formal offer and then cash changing hands if that is signed.
What Groupon knew would happen is Google would have a look at their books and realize they weren't making money, and had no plan as to how to. Google would then say "Ya, I'm thinking: no," and back out. That would screw over any IPO because people would ask "Well hang on, what did Google see that was wrong?"
They figured, correctly, that if they just went public they could pull a fast one on people and get some cash. It appears they were right.
I think they have them. We shall see.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through."
Wow! He must have been the greatest CEO ever!
Damn this economy.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Seems like if your company is losing money, the last thing you want to do is cancel deals that are making you money.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/groupon-gun-deals_n_2527168.html
How does a "business" whose method of operation involves not creating of having to store and move stock and simply take a cut lose money? How does one screw up up such a cash cow?
We've been wondering when we'd see you.... Investors are no smarter now than they were after the first dotcom crash, so why wouldn't we expect another string of spectacular failures from your sector once equity built up in the market again?
Maybe this isn't you coming, but stories like this sure make me wonder!
I think Groupon is GREAT, if you're a consumer. For businesses not so much, Groupons are expensive to offer, if I'm not mistaken the vendor pays 50% of the discount value to Groupon as a fee. So if you offer a Groupon that entiles you to $100 worth of stuff for $50, then Groupon gets $25 from the vendor for each sale. From the vendors point of view, you just got $100 worth of stuff for $25, pretty straightforward. I'm sick and tired of reading about businesses that lost money by offering a Groupons, if you did then you don't have a grasp of simple math. You simply CAN'T offer a Groupon where you lose money, if you can't meet your costs in my example for the $25 you will actually keep, then you can't make the offer.
Rare, represent.
Now I want that soundtrack.
Lol, that was a hard game and that tube level sucked.
Rare, represent.
Now I want that soundtrack.
You can rip it useing mame or M1 and the roms.
They should have just given him all of the money and closed the company. The poor man won't be able to eat now. His employees are useless.
--libman