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To go against the tide in these comments, this is actually exactly what they should be doing. They've properly identified the problem (finally), and do have eno

To go against the tide in these comments, this is actually exactly what they should be doing. They've properly identified the problem (finally), and do have enormous resources in attacking it. As long as the daily deal product can hold its own and not bleed money, they're well-suited to build the 'operating system for local,' an analogy I've been waiting for. They could do some interesting work in B2B products, vertically targeted/non-discounted/package offering, and generally use their existing resource base to get people offline together in new and creative ways.

sunahsuh 14y ago
Definitely agree: they have everything in place for this. Having a personal relationship with that many small business owners around the country is huge and there's so much low-hanging fruit in the "MIS for small biz" space. There's a lot of startups that are making headway here (Square, etc) but they don't nearly have the resources (the biggest being the massive sales org) that Groupon does. As soon as Grpn ships a new product along these lines, they can call hundreds of thousands of potential customers that already know the sales rep on the phone and are possibly already paying a competitor for a sub-par product. If I were Andrew Mason, I'd be looking to acquire a small-biz focused product company at this point to accelerate the process and start shipping asap. (Yes, I'm aware I'm totally armchair CEO-ing here.)
- dfriedmn 14y ago
  Not to mention trying to partner with dating sites and the like to offer offline inventory to their users - new revenue stream for both parties, and solves the problem of awkwardly have to choose where you're going and figure out who's paying...
tatsuke95 14y ago
>"They could do some interesting work in B2B products, vertically targeted/non-discounted/package offering, and generally use their existing resource base to get people offline together in new and creative ways." That's still a very labour/sales intensive process. Can this business model work without droves of underpaid call centre workers?
- dfriedmn 14y ago
  It's a good question, but I'm not sure it has to. They're almost breaking even right now with that cost, and their only consumer product is a crappy deals e-mail site. With better consumer offerings, they could be getting 2-3x the value off of that cost.

sunahsuh 14y ago

Definitely agree: they have everything in place for this. Having a personal relationship with that many small business owners around the country is huge and there's so much low-hanging fruit in the "MIS for small biz" space. There's a lot of startups that are making headway here (Square, etc) but they don't nearly have the resources (the biggest being the massive sales org) that Groupon does. As soon as Grpn ships a new product along these lines, they can call hundreds of thousands of potential customers that already know the sales rep on the phone and are possibly already paying a competitor for a sub-par product. If I were Andrew Mason, I'd be looking to acquire a small-biz focused product company at this point to accelerate the process and start shipping asap. (Yes, I'm aware I'm totally armchair CEO-ing here.)

dfriedmn 14y ago
Not to mention trying to partner with dating sites and the like to offer offline inventory to their users - new revenue stream for both parties, and solves the problem of awkwardly have to choose where you're going and figure out who's paying...

tatsuke95 14y ago

>"They could do some interesting work in B2B products, vertically targeted/non-discounted/package offering, and generally use their existing resource base to get people offline together in new and creative ways." That's still a very labour/sales intensive process. Can this business model work without droves of underpaid call centre workers?

dfriedmn 14y ago
It's a good question, but I'm not sure it has to. They're almost breaking even right now with that cost, and their only consumer product is a crappy deals e-mail site. With better consumer offerings, they could be getting 2-3x the value off of that cost.