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This guy. Travel back in time with me to October, 2010. Stanford. Startup School. Andrew Mason has been talking, sharing the origin story of Groupon, the less
by danilocampos 14y ago
This guy.
Travel back in time with me to October, 2010. Stanford. Startup School.
Andrew Mason has been talking, sharing the origin story of Groupon, the lessons learned about entrepreneurship, the pitfalls, the joys. He is fun and engaging. You wanna like him, you wanna see Groupon succeed.
We get to the part of the talk where questions are asked and answered. He answers some early softballs. Then one brave soul stood up with a real query that only Mason could answer.
Is Groupon a sustainable business, given what we'd been hearing from merchants online?
It was as if a mask had dropped. Where once there was cheer and energy, there was now a sullenness. The man seemed affronted at the notion that his business would be challenged in this way. Despite the fact the opportunity to ask just such a question was one of the great values of a venue of this sort. Despite the fact that Groupon's sustainability had been the elephant in the room the whole time. This was right after some of the first stories from distressed Groupon merchants had been trickling out.
Petulant, absent all of his previous ebullience, Mason asserted the business was sustainable, offered no supporting details, and demanded the next question.
A good leader has the intellectual honesty to recognize their missteps and explain them, along with the remedies explored. The expectation for that is even more acute when you've been elevated to the role of mentor.
It was in that moment, his phoniness laid bare, that I decided Groupon was likely melting puppies in its basement, Mason knew it, and didn't know how to reverse the operation.
- AmericanOP 14y agoHe also hinted at a radical new product, some social Groupon 2.0 platform that never came to fruition. I'm more curious about that in retrospect and what happened. The real story at that moment in time was the flowering of hundreds of Groupon clones. "This guy" ...Get off it. Ideas > events > people. Leave it to HN, tearing down the mainstream success stories of our clan in ever decreasingly creative ways. BTW, he wasn't a happy guy. He described very clearly at that event he forgot what being happy felt like while building GRPN. Sorry to bust your editorial bubble, but when you make a bold + false assertion, your detractors will use it to debase your entire narrative. I'm learning that for a certain segment of humans the presence of rich people bring out claws and fangs, like a full moon.
- danilocampos 14y agoYour sanctimony would be a bit more compelling if Mason had consistently happy campers creating his riches. That's not how it happened. Groupon made a lot of money on the backs of small business owners too unsophisticated to understand the nature of the deals they were making. Whatever lack of happiness Mason sustained, it was mirrored in spades by the folks who were burned by Groupon's rapacious sales force and very casual approach to delivering checks on time. This is a sketchy-ass company we're talking about and this guy made a lot of money off that sketch. Let's be real.
- AmericanOP 14y agoYou think he was fired by the street for being too rapacious? WSJ: 'GRPN up 5%, Expected to be Less Aggressive on Earnings.' And how many of those miserable campers spending $1.5 billion a year for half-price chocolate-covered strawberries do you speak for? Any data on the number of SMBs who got bent over, or just memories of a PR kerfluffle you read last year? You should warn Uber and other companies you respect who use Groupon routinely that their checks won't be arriving on time. My sarcasm isn't directed at you personally, but all broad strokes who delight in black ink when focusing on the aesthetic of someone's career. Schadenfreude fruit hang low.
- natural219 14y agoLet's be real. It's the job of the small business owner to <i> run his damn business </i>, and if GRPN found a way to convince them to sign the checks, then all the power to them. Welcome to capitalism, read what you buy before you buy it.
- jtbigwoo 14y agoAh, but customers talk to each other, especially in this day and age. A company like GRPN doesn't really have an infrastructure advantage or technical advantage over other companies. It relies almost entirely on its network of small business customers. Turn off those customers and the sharks pick the bones of the company clean. Edit: clarity
- 14y ago
- mgkimsal 14y agoName me one CEO or founder that would go to "startup school", stand before a bunch of people, and answer that question with anything but "yes". I'm taking it you're basing your opinions on the way he answered the question, not the answer itself, right?
- rhizome 14y agoI suspect it's the difference between, "yes," and "yes, because..."
- danilocampos 14y ago100% correct. The way I'd have answered it to match the tone of every other thing he'd said goes a little something like this: "You know, it's a fair question. Obviously, I believe the answer is yes. We're still learning a lot about how to scale this business and educate new partners. We could have done a better job in some cases, and I think that's what you're seeing when people are frustrated by us online. We're working with our merchants to understand what they need to make sure everyone – both our customers and our merchants – gets a great deal."
- largesse 14y agoSo the problem isn't that you thought he was a hypocrite, it's that he didn't lie well enough to hide it. Isn't that hypocritical?
- danilocampos 14y agoI didn't have a problem at all – Groupon did. And the dramatic fashion with which his mask dropped was the tipoff, that's all.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoNo, the problem was he didn't have or share a story, vision, idea, or plan on why he believed the business was sustainable.
- PakG1 14y ago
- orangethirty 14y agoThis is a rather odd argument to post. You are faulting the CEO of a company for stating that he believes his company will do well in spite of publicly available data. No mother ever calls a child ugly. No matter what. Plus ever CEO out there exhibits this same kind of behavior. It's bad for the company when the leader is talking negatively about it.
- badgar 14y agoNo, if you read other comments in this thread, he's faulting the CEO for his attitude. Not the words he used.
- orangethirty 14y agoThat's my point. What attitude would you expect from a CEO? Their duty is to promote their business under all circumstances. Could he have acted differently? Sure. Bu that's just gossiping.
- danilocampos 14y agoI'm not faulting Mason. I'm saying several non-verbal cues reflected the troubled state of his business. The sudden lack of transparency was very telling. Whatever was going on there, he did not want to talk about it. If everything were indeed hunky dory, he'd have responded differently.
- orangethirty 14y agoWell yes, of course. I agree. But that's something all CEOs have to do in some time or another.
- danilocampos 14y agoCEOs running companies ethically have to do it a little less often, I think.
- cshenoy 14y agoSort of reminds me of his "Death Stare" interview with Kara Swisher. http://live.wsj.com/video/d9-video-andrew-mason-death-stare/A4E4BCC4-1724-4676-9EEB-2CB4D122F8DC.html#!A4E4BCC4-1724-4676-9EEB-2CB4D122F8DC http://live.wsj.com/video/d9-video-andrew-mason-death-stare/... But really, hopefully it's a move in the right direction for the struggling company. There's opportunity to open new revenue streams especially considering that businesses are still creating new Groupon deals.
- antidaily 14y agoLefkofsky and Keywell would have just shot that guy in the face.
- tptacek 14y agoOne thing every CEO in the world can do is spin an off-the-cuff bullshit story about how their business is sustainable. Mason didn't? That tells me very little.
- sskates 14y agoReally? It's somewhat of a bad sign that he couldn't even manage that.
- cshesse 14y agoAs I recall he did portray it as risky. I remember him saying something along the lines of them having the Wired Magazine covers on a wall from all the previous huge startups that failed miserably, to remind them to be humble. I guess it wasn't that effective.
- jjb123 14y agoIt was effective; in getting more press because of the cute little anecdote. Which is the reason they did it anyhow. I would imagine that what a company has on its walls has never materially affected its future.