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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.
You need to be big like Amazon to lose money like that.
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.'"
Harsh. It may be convenient to group people into nice neat categories eg. "All CEOs are terrible people with no feelings", but in reality the world is a much more varied place.
I'm not sure that's really what happened. I'll bet it's more like Google looked at their books, said "WTF???" and let Groupon "back away" from the deal to save face.
That's a very real possibility. Another possibility is that Andrew Mason really did turn down Google's offer because he knew it would kill his scam. Google isn't just going to walk in and hand them a check for $6 Billion. There's a lot of "due diligence".
Groupon was cooking the books, losing money but showing profitability. Mason was probably worried that if word got out that Google killed the deal because of what they found, Groupon would be tainted and that could put a serious damper on their IPO.
Don't cry for Andrew Mason, the fired CEO. Thanks to Groupon's IPO he leaves a pretty wealthy guy. Which is what this was really all about all along.
I don't know anything about him, but it was the best CEO firing letter ever.
After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. If you're wondering why... you haven't been paying attention.
and
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. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I'll now take some time to decompress (FYI I'm looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I'll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.
I'm sure he made plenty of cash and now is a good time to get the hell away from GroupOn, toxic as it is.
He got a Groupon for a $1 million severance package for only $500,000.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine