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> "And they still aren't turning a profit." That part just boggles my mind. How can you go from revenue of 30M to 713M in a single year and not have wound up
by roc 15y ago
> "And they still aren't turning a profit."
That part just boggles my mind. How can you go from revenue of 30M to 713M in a single year and not have wound up with any profit? Their revenue has grown so fast that I simply cannot imagine being able to greenlight enough spending [1] to get rid of it all in such a short amount of time.
[1] intelligent spends that is; frivolous waste notwithstanding.
- hundredwatt 15y agoI assume there revenue numbers refer to the amount of money collected BEFORE paying merchants. Is that correct?
- bryanh 15y agoYes. I'm assuming that it reported as the cost of revenue (~58% in Q1 2011).
- jonknee 15y agoI'd imagine it has something to do with the 7,000+ employees and incredible amount of advertising spend.
- roc 15y agoThe employee growth is definitely a part of it. They went from, what was it? 120 in 2009 to 4000 in 2010? My boggling is more at the challenge of intelligently doing that spending than simply tabulating it. e.g. how do you intelligently hire 20 people a workday, every workday for an entire year, when you were a 100-person company?
- andrewcross 15y agoJust mind-boggling. In Canada at least the advertising budget is just monstrous. Their ads are everywhere!
- sbov 15y agoI'm not a pro at reading these, but it seems like you can see for yourself at: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1490281/000104746911005613/a2203913zs-1.htm http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1490281/00010474691100561... That 713M "costed" 433M (seems to be that what goes to the companies advertising via groupon). Then theres 263M on "marketing", 233M on "selling, general, and administrative", and 203M on "acquisition related". The link has more detail on what each of these means.