5 ms·

The real deal with Groupon

30 points by pitdesi 15y ago

Gaussian 15y ago
This is 60 minutes... where we're only 1 year behind the news! This is like their exposé on high-speed trading that came six months after the Flash Crash. Brilliant. Not that I hate the show. But their tendency to cherry pick well-trodden stories always annoys me.
- MengYuanLong 15y ago
  Indeed. And in addition to that, they don't even dig deeper with the extra time. This expose has all the depth of a pleasant Sunday picnic with Mason.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- sunchild 15y ago
  60 Minutes pretty much follows the same template for every story they do. If you watch it enough, they'll eventually cover something you know about, and reveal their total lack of understanding. They just slavishly go through the motions, hitting all the same notes every week.
wtn 15y ago
Won't play on iOS…
gab008 15y ago
Did not see the video-report, the commercial required to watch this takes too long (more than 15 seconds). I've closed the tab after first 7 seconds.
- ryanjmo 15y ago
  It is a twelve minute video; a minute comercial is less than 10% of the overall time. It really isn't that unreasonable, in my opinion. Watching a minute commercial on the internet is a good way to support video on the web.
  - ComputerGuru 15y ago
    a minute comercial is less than 10% of the overall time. It really isn't that unreasonable, in my opinion. I don't care enough about Groupon to hit the link, but I absolutely, completely, and categorically disagree here. Aside from the fact that expecting "payment" upfront in the form of watching an ad before getting any info isn't necessarily the smoothest way of doing it, I think 10% is a lot of time. It seems there are really are only two kinds of people, those that understand that time is money, and those that don't. If I had to "give away" 10% of the time that I spent absorbing information online, I would probably stop using the internet altogether. The signal:noise ratio online is already in some places ridiculously low, especially in video content (which is why I read and not watch the news, weather, or whatever) and taking an additional 10% premium on that is ridiculous. I surf "free" sites for work to gain knowledge and find ideas up to twenty hours a day. 10% of that time is two hours!!!! That's a lot of time. That's enough time for me to drive to the next state and come back. It's enough time for me write a simple open source utility and stick it up on github. It's enough time for me to bill a client five or six hundred dollars easy (depending on the client and assuming a job is available, etc.). My problem is this: time does not scale. If you demand something as universal as "10% of your time" from person A and person B, that's possibly asking dramatically different stuff. 2 hours of my time can never be directly compared to two hours of someone else's. Two hours of Bill Gates' time or Obama's time is worth more than I make in a year, if used correctly. At the same time, 10% of my time is more than a month of a junior high students life is worth. /rant
- sequoia 15y ago
  Ad-blocker just skipped the commercial :p
Johnyma22 15y ago
This is not journalism, this is a company profile.
AznHisoka 15y ago
I immediately stopped reading when I saw they were interviewing Mason.. Groupon is a public company, and the CEO/founder of course wants to shine a positive light on things. You can't learn much here.
- pbreit 15y ago
  I didn't downvote but will say the comment is dumb. In fact, we can learn a lot from successful public company CEOs like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Marc Beniof and Andrew Mason.
  - AznHisoka 15y ago
    I didn't say you can't learn much about runnign a company, but the title was 'the real deal with Groupon'. You can't learn the 'real deal' here.
    - pbreit 15y ago
      You were clearly generalizing about founder/CEOs. Lame downvotes, guys.
  - kristianp 15y ago
    I agree, but for a different reason. In order for a report to claim to be balanced it has to have representatives from both sides of an argument.
    - pbreit 15y ago
      Was the report really claiming to be balanced?
mmonihan 15y ago
I mean, he's a likeable guy, but something is rotten in Denmark.
fleitz 15y ago
As a small business owner the interview left several questions unanswered for me. The most important I had was which investment would I lose least on: buying GRPN or running a Groupon?
- samstave 15y ago
  Seriously, SOMEONE needs to perform this analysis. Invest 10K into their stock and 10K into their program, compare results after N months (12?)
leak 15y ago
I guess my headline wasn't good. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3468848 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3468848
teddyknox 15y ago
The scary part about Groupon's explosive growth is the difficulty of employing 150 people/day without lowering required employee competence. In the long run I think that the smaller, competing companies with more competent employees are going to win the market on a city by city basis.
- Smirnoff 15y ago
  ala Living Social ;)
robertp 15y ago
This probably one of Andrew's best interviews. In my recollection- every piece of press or articles written about him/groupon have been focused on the negative fact driven parts that defines groupon. I did see glimmer of hope that he is a passionate ceo focused on making his dream of his business become a profitable reality. Right now it is leaning that his dream isn't sustainable but you never know.
pg_bot 15y ago
For those complaining about this being a puff piece about groupon... understand that a media company has little to no incentive to take companies like groupon to task. Sure they may ask one or two mildly tough questions that may address some issues that people have with the company, but if they truly hit hard they would go out of business. No one wants to do an interview where they will be sweating the entire time, and journalists who gain a tough reputation will soon be circling the classifieds. This explains why someone like Larry King can be extremely successful, yet there aren't any hard hitting interviewers out there.
- lusr 15y ago
  Tim Sebastian hosting HARDtalk was the only true hard hitting interviewer I've ever seen, although I suppose the BBC doesn't count as a traditional media company. I was disappointed with the quality of his successors; they turned HARDtalk into a talk show. Does anybody know of any current shows with a similar interview style?

30 points by pitdesi 15y ago

This is 60 minutes... where we're only 1 year behind the news! This is like their exposé on high-speed trading that came six months after the Flash Crash. Brilliant. Not that I hate the show. But their tendency to cherry pick well-trodden stories always annoys me.

MengYuanLong 15y ago
Indeed. And in addition to that, they don't even dig deeper with the extra time. This expose has all the depth of a pleasant Sunday picnic with Mason.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
sunchild 15y ago
60 Minutes pretty much follows the same template for every story they do. If you watch it enough, they'll eventually cover something you know about, and reveal their total lack of understanding. They just slavishly go through the motions, hitting all the same notes every week.

wtn 15y ago

Won't play on iOS…

gab008 15y ago

Did not see the video-report, the commercial required to watch this takes too long (more than 15 seconds). I've closed the tab after first 7 seconds.

ryanjmo 15y ago
It is a twelve minute video; a minute comercial is less than 10% of the overall time. It really isn't that unreasonable, in my opinion. Watching a minute commercial on the internet is a good way to support video on the web.
- ComputerGuru 15y ago
  a minute comercial is less than 10% of the overall time. It really isn't that unreasonable, in my opinion. I don't care enough about Groupon to hit the link, but I absolutely, completely, and categorically disagree here. Aside from the fact that expecting "payment" upfront in the form of watching an ad before getting any info isn't necessarily the smoothest way of doing it, I think 10% is a lot of time. It seems there are really are only two kinds of people, those that understand that time is money, and those that don't. If I had to "give away" 10% of the time that I spent absorbing information online, I would probably stop using the internet altogether. The signal:noise ratio online is already in some places ridiculously low, especially in video content (which is why I read and not watch the news, weather, or whatever) and taking an additional 10% premium on that is ridiculous. I surf "free" sites for work to gain knowledge and find ideas up to twenty hours a day. 10% of that time is two hours!!!! That's a lot of time. That's enough time for me to drive to the next state and come back. It's enough time for me write a simple open source utility and stick it up on github. It's enough time for me to bill a client five or six hundred dollars easy (depending on the client and assuming a job is available, etc.). My problem is this: time does not scale. If you demand something as universal as "10% of your time" from person A and person B, that's possibly asking dramatically different stuff. 2 hours of my time can never be directly compared to two hours of someone else's. Two hours of Bill Gates' time or Obama's time is worth more than I make in a year, if used correctly. At the same time, 10% of my time is more than a month of a junior high students life is worth. /rant
sequoia 15y ago
Ad-blocker just skipped the commercial :p

Johnyma22 15y ago

This is not journalism, this is a company profile.

AznHisoka 15y ago

I immediately stopped reading when I saw they were interviewing Mason.. Groupon is a public company, and the CEO/founder of course wants to shine a positive light on things. You can't learn much here.

pbreit 15y ago
I didn't downvote but will say the comment is dumb. In fact, we can learn a lot from successful public company CEOs like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Marc Beniof and Andrew Mason.
- AznHisoka 15y ago
  I didn't say you can't learn much about runnign a company, but the title was 'the real deal with Groupon'. You can't learn the 'real deal' here.
  - pbreit 15y ago
    You were clearly generalizing about founder/CEOs. Lame downvotes, guys.
- kristianp 15y ago
  I agree, but for a different reason. In order for a report to claim to be balanced it has to have representatives from both sides of an argument.
  - pbreit 15y ago
    Was the report really claiming to be balanced?

mmonihan 15y ago

I mean, he's a likeable guy, but something is rotten in Denmark.

fleitz 15y ago

As a small business owner the interview left several questions unanswered for me. The most important I had was which investment would I lose least on: buying GRPN or running a Groupon?

samstave 15y ago
Seriously, SOMEONE needs to perform this analysis. Invest 10K into their stock and 10K into their program, compare results after N months (12?)

leak 15y ago

I guess my headline wasn't good. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3468848 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3468848

teddyknox 15y ago

The scary part about Groupon's explosive growth is the difficulty of employing 150 people/day without lowering required employee competence. In the long run I think that the smaller, competing companies with more competent employees are going to win the market on a city by city basis.

Smirnoff 15y ago
ala Living Social ;)

robertp 15y ago

This probably one of Andrew's best interviews. In my recollection- every piece of press or articles written about him/groupon have been focused on the negative fact driven parts that defines groupon. I did see glimmer of hope that he is a passionate ceo focused on making his dream of his business become a profitable reality. Right now it is leaning that his dream isn't sustainable but you never know.

pg_bot 15y ago

For those complaining about this being a puff piece about groupon... understand that a media company has little to no incentive to take companies like groupon to task. Sure they may ask one or two mildly tough questions that may address some issues that people have with the company, but if they truly hit hard they would go out of business. No one wants to do an interview where they will be sweating the entire time, and journalists who gain a tough reputation will soon be circling the classifieds. This explains why someone like Larry King can be extremely successful, yet there aren't any hard hitting interviewers out there.

lusr 15y ago
Tim Sebastian hosting HARDtalk was the only true hard hitting interviewer I've ever seen, although I suppose the BBC doesn't count as a traditional media company. I was disappointed with the quality of his successors; they turned HARDtalk into a talk show. Does anybody know of any current shows with a similar interview style?