That's great reasoning, and it gives me an idea: let's book the $45 profits as soon as the customer signs up! (of course, we can calculate the PDV, to make sure

That's great reasoning, and it gives me an idea: let's book the $45 profits as soon as the customer signs up! (of course, we can calculate the PDV, to make sure everything's honest, so it's really only $38). In fact, we've calculated that it takes $5 to bring in a new customer, and we have a $5M marketing budget, so let's book those million customers now, too. That's $38M in profits the first year! Not bad. But hey, why don't you give us $5 billion? Then, we could get a billion customers, and bank $38B in profits the first year. Minus a few billion to cash out the early investors, of course -- but hey, we can still give you a 30X return on your money. [END SARCASM] Yes, we understand the story. We're not stupid. It's not that complicated of a story. But we want to see how often the story intersects with reality, and how much is fiction. Accounting is the tool that allows us to measure the story against reality. If we start weaving stories into the accounting, then it's no longer a-counting, it's a-wishing. None of that means Groupon is a bad business, it just means that they are trying to insert marketing material into their accounting statements.