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I generally agree with Andrew's posts but I disagree solely with respect to Groupon. In fact there are tons of groupons, and as far as I can tell they're all go

I generally agree with Andrew's posts but I disagree solely with respect to Groupon. In fact there are tons of groupons, and as far as I can tell they're all going concerns with increasing revenues, email lists, and growing user bases. Here in Argentina, there are at least three others, not including the startup put together by four classmates...that was soon acquired by groupon becoming groupon.com.ar.

andrew_null 15y ago
The post specifically mentioned a valid strategy as going after other geographies where groupon is not currently operating.
- rubyrescue 15y ago
  i saw that but my point is they are operating here - they're one of the largest online ad buyers - but so are a few others all of which seem to be acquiring customers. it will be interesting to see if the other reply is onto something that looks are deceiving and we'll see heavy turnover.
spanktheuser 15y ago
I spoke with the CEO of a company that aggregates a very large percentage of the daily deal sites. They have several hundred they currently follow. Two things which may be salient. First, the CEO claimed that the smaller deal sites were all desperate to be aggregated, as building their list has proven to be far more expensive than they expected. Second, the aggregator is seeing a 30% annual turnover in the deal site population. That is, approximately 1/3rd of deal sites go under annually and are replaced by a like number of newly launched companies. I interpret this as evidence that the lion's share of the market is likely to go to a few large players like Groupon, Living Social, Facebook, etc. It's been 2.5 years since Groupon launched. If smaller players were going to successfully carve up this market, wouldn't we see signs of that happening by now?
webwright 15y ago
I don't think Andrew's being literal. Of course you could START a groupon tomorrow. What he's saying is that 85 million subscribers at a current acquisition cost of $30 (!) is a helluva moat.
- fennecfoxen 15y ago
  You can start a Groupon, but can you finish one?

andrew_null 15y ago

The post specifically mentioned a valid strategy as going after other geographies where groupon is not currently operating.

rubyrescue 15y ago
i saw that but my point is they are operating here - they're one of the largest online ad buyers - but so are a few others all of which seem to be acquiring customers. it will be interesting to see if the other reply is onto something that looks are deceiving and we'll see heavy turnover.

spanktheuser 15y ago

I spoke with the CEO of a company that aggregates a very large percentage of the daily deal sites. They have several hundred they currently follow. Two things which may be salient. First, the CEO claimed that the smaller deal sites were all desperate to be aggregated, as building their list has proven to be far more expensive than they expected. Second, the aggregator is seeing a 30% annual turnover in the deal site population. That is, approximately 1/3rd of deal sites go under annually and are replaced by a like number of newly launched companies. I interpret this as evidence that the lion's share of the market is likely to go to a few large players like Groupon, Living Social, Facebook, etc. It's been 2.5 years since Groupon launched. If smaller players were going to successfully carve up this market, wouldn't we see signs of that happening by now?

webwright 15y ago

I don't think Andrew's being literal. Of course you could START a groupon tomorrow. What he's saying is that 85 million subscribers at a current acquisition cost of $30 (!) is a helluva moat.

fennecfoxen 15y ago
You can start a Groupon, but can you finish one?