But this isn't a time when "no one else is" investing in Groupon --- it's a time when a whole lot of major players have, evidently betting on the willingness of

But this isn't a time when "no one else is" investing in Groupon --- it's a time when a whole lot of major players have, evidently betting on the willingness of a deal-happy general public to buy even more when they can. If they don't, the wolf will be at the door in a hurry. Which, by the way, is in marked contrast to the kind of negative buzz Google had at the time of their IPO. There were legitimate doubts about the sustainability of their business model, in part because they were deliberately concealing the size of their profits as long as they could to avoid attracting competition. (See Levy, "In the Plex".) But at the time they went public, they were making money, in much larger amounts than anybody outside the company had realized. As to Groupon: if dhh is reading the balance sheet right, they need the proceeds of the IPO just to keep the company going, unless something very dramatic happens soon. They have only two quarters' worth of cash on hand at the current burn rate. The $750 million from the IPO will extend that by about two years (if the burn rate doesn't go up!). But if you invest, then you're counting on management to pull a not-yet-evident rabbit out of a hat within that time. And you're expecting that from a management team that put most of the roughly $1 billion that they raised off private markets in the last two rounds in their own private pockets (they sold founder shares to the VCs), leaving only $150 million available to the business itself as working capital. Good luck!