6 ms·

LivingSocial co-founder Aaron Battalion quits

67 points by funkbot 14y ago

funkbot 14y ago
Something about rats and sinking ships. Hope all the talent there is planning their exit before the company exits for them. LivingSocial is not long for this world.
lawnchair_larry 14y ago
Is anything LivingSocial did something to be proud of? It seems like the majority of those who invested in or did business with LivingSocial suffered greatly. That's fine, sometimes things don't work out, but I don't know why you'd brag about it. "millions of consumers around the world have experienced their local cities because of our products" Sounds like he is reaching, just a bit...
- eclipticplane 14y ago
  > "millions of consumers around the world have experienced their local cities because of our products" I think its a fair assessment, but not the full story. Millions of people did do things they wouldn't normally do. No way in hell I'm going to pay $200 for a family "dolpin tour" where you usually don't see dolphins, but when it's on LivingSocial (or similar sites) for $50? Sure, why not. Now, whether it was a boon or bust for local businesses or not is a debated topic. I'm pretty sure that dolphin tour place actually lost money on my trip, or came close to break-even at most, and we were one time customers.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    Not to mention that a normal, no-dolphins-promised boat ride may be less than $50 undiscounted anyway.
  - alxbrun 14y ago
    Really weird for a dolphin tour business to do a coupon deal... How on earth would somebody become a regular customer of a dolphin tour ?
    - jazzyb 14y ago
      I would imagine they're hoping the people using the coupons have a good time and then tell their friends about it, and the tour gains more money through word-of-mouth.
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      Exactly.
- minimaxir 14y ago
  They had revenue, which can't be said about most big startups nowadays. Profit is another story, though.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- doktrin 14y ago
  If I had co-founded LivingSocial, I would not have considered the last n years of my life wasted, nor do I believe the majority of contributors here would either.
  - jinushaun 14y ago
    I would be so lucky to have cofounded a company like LS. My score so far is zero.
- vicks711 14y ago
  Agree with you. LivingSocial ran a big "spam" ad campaign targeted towards India in 2011. They would show ads online asking users to sign up to check deals in local cities. After signing up one would find that LivingSocial was not serving ANY Indian city. It seems the objective of the campaign was to collect e-mail ids.
biznickman 14y ago
Why are all the comments so negative on this thread? Aaron has personally contributed a ton to the communities he's a part of and I have no doubt the same goes for LivingSocial. It's a company of thousands of employees and one that most definitely has a massive consumer impact. Whether or not the business thrives or fails, few people on this site can say they founded something with anywhere near as much a reach as LS. That's an accomplishment.
- lawnchair_larry 14y ago
  I think the comments on this and other LivingSocial threads are negative because many have the perception that LivingSocial was a net negative force on the world. This is a pretty reasonable reaction. Things like "impact" and "reach" are orthogonal to whether or not something of value was contributed. Let's face it, it was a boiler room with immense reach. Technically I suppose you can call that an "accomplishment", but I wouldn't call it an admirable one. I'm not saying he's a bad guy (I know nothing about him), but I think that their founders should be doing less boasting and more apologizing. I don't know that the problems they caused were intentional, but I have to think that they must have taken some notice when it was apparent that they were pushing their staff to sell unsustainable products. Sometimes it's hard to notice these things when you're pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars by cashing out early though.
  - joonix 14y ago
    A net negative force on the world? Seriously? How is that? I got good deals, businesses got to try a new marketing method, many did well, some poorly. No businesses were coerced or forced into offering a coupon on LS. I fail to see how they are a negative force or anything worse than a publisher like Yellow Pages selling ads.
    - ttrreeww 14y ago
      Many did poorly. Few did well. Groupon/LivingSocial was a classic pump and dump kind of business, only difference is Groupon reached IPO to dump it on your mutual funds.
ttrreeww 14y ago
The end must be near.
- niggler 14y ago
  That was obvious for a long time. Last big discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5255362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5255362
  - ttrreeww 14y ago
    I remember that, but wow, that was only 36 days ago.
jrochkind1 14y ago
Not much to report... but an incredible love of ellipses. Maybe I burned a few periods, but, man, you have no idea what kinds of grammatical innovation are yet to come. Always remember... punctuate to live don't live to punctuate.
nchuhoai 14y ago
Quite a few commentators on this entry seem to debate whether LS was a "good" or "bad" thing. The ones debating "good", say it allowed consumers to get great deals, merchants to get coverage, and employees to be employed. The ones debating "bad", say it caused businesses to do dumb decisions and VC's to do dumb decisions. All in all, I'd say Groupon/LS was good for the world, because it is exactly to show what happens with these kind of VC-businesses. They need to scale large, and not all of them can become sustainable. Clearly, someone needs to get screwed in the mean time. We need more profilic failures like Groupon/LS, because obviously the VC model has been the holy grail for quite some time (less so now then lets say two years ago). I don't mean to hate on the VC model (like dhh for example), I like it a lot for many business models. In fact, I liked it for Groupon as well. We just should keep in mind what we are dealing with. Like so many times, information is the key, and the ones that got screwed over are usually the ones that trust blindly.
faukner 14y ago
http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/ http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/
kaa2102 14y ago
There are a lot of negative comments about LivingSocial's business model. The irony is that a lot of what I see on HN and in tech is about mobile, social media, and games.
dmbaggett 14y ago
I met Aaron when I was on a panel with him at Bootstrap Maryland, before Living Social was big. He was a class act then, and he obviously still is. Living Social -- more than any other company in the last 5 years -- showed that the DC area startup community is alive and well and can play with the big boys in the consumer internet space. LS almost single-handedly overcame the region's inferiority complex in this regard. I hope Aaron is sufficiently proud of the role he played there.
mailarchis 14y ago
There is a bit of irony in the timing. Living Socials first product was visual bookshelf. They pivoted to daily deals business. Fast forward 6 years, amazon acquires goodreads while all daily deal sites are struggling.

67 points by funkbot 14y ago

Something about rats and sinking ships. Hope all the talent there is planning their exit before the company exits for them. LivingSocial is not long for this world.

lawnchair_larry 14y ago

Is anything LivingSocial did something to be proud of? It seems like the majority of those who invested in or did business with LivingSocial suffered greatly. That's fine, sometimes things don't work out, but I don't know why you'd brag about it. "millions of consumers around the world have experienced their local cities because of our products" Sounds like he is reaching, just a bit...

eclipticplane 14y ago
> "millions of consumers around the world have experienced their local cities because of our products" I think its a fair assessment, but not the full story. Millions of people did do things they wouldn't normally do. No way in hell I'm going to pay $200 for a family "dolpin tour" where you usually don't see dolphins, but when it's on LivingSocial (or similar sites) for $50? Sure, why not. Now, whether it was a boon or bust for local businesses or not is a debated topic. I'm pretty sure that dolphin tour place actually lost money on my trip, or came close to break-even at most, and we were one time customers.
- rhizome 14y ago
  Not to mention that a normal, no-dolphins-promised boat ride may be less than $50 undiscounted anyway.
- alxbrun 14y ago
  Really weird for a dolphin tour business to do a coupon deal... How on earth would somebody become a regular customer of a dolphin tour ?
  - jazzyb 14y ago
    I would imagine they're hoping the people using the coupons have a good time and then tell their friends about it, and the tour gains more money through word-of-mouth.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    Exactly.
minimaxir 14y ago
They had revenue, which can't be said about most big startups nowadays. Profit is another story, though.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
doktrin 14y ago
If I had co-founded LivingSocial, I would not have considered the last n years of my life wasted, nor do I believe the majority of contributors here would either.
- jinushaun 14y ago
  I would be so lucky to have cofounded a company like LS. My score so far is zero.
vicks711 14y ago
Agree with you. LivingSocial ran a big "spam" ad campaign targeted towards India in 2011. They would show ads online asking users to sign up to check deals in local cities. After signing up one would find that LivingSocial was not serving ANY Indian city. It seems the objective of the campaign was to collect e-mail ids.

biznickman 14y ago

Why are all the comments so negative on this thread? Aaron has personally contributed a ton to the communities he's a part of and I have no doubt the same goes for LivingSocial. It's a company of thousands of employees and one that most definitely has a massive consumer impact. Whether or not the business thrives or fails, few people on this site can say they founded something with anywhere near as much a reach as LS. That's an accomplishment.

lawnchair_larry 14y ago
I think the comments on this and other LivingSocial threads are negative because many have the perception that LivingSocial was a net negative force on the world. This is a pretty reasonable reaction. Things like "impact" and "reach" are orthogonal to whether or not something of value was contributed. Let's face it, it was a boiler room with immense reach. Technically I suppose you can call that an "accomplishment", but I wouldn't call it an admirable one. I'm not saying he's a bad guy (I know nothing about him), but I think that their founders should be doing less boasting and more apologizing. I don't know that the problems they caused were intentional, but I have to think that they must have taken some notice when it was apparent that they were pushing their staff to sell unsustainable products. Sometimes it's hard to notice these things when you're pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars by cashing out early though.
- joonix 14y ago
  A net negative force on the world? Seriously? How is that? I got good deals, businesses got to try a new marketing method, many did well, some poorly. No businesses were coerced or forced into offering a coupon on LS. I fail to see how they are a negative force or anything worse than a publisher like Yellow Pages selling ads.
  - ttrreeww 14y ago
    Many did poorly. Few did well. Groupon/LivingSocial was a classic pump and dump kind of business, only difference is Groupon reached IPO to dump it on your mutual funds.

ttrreeww 14y ago

The end must be near.

niggler 14y ago
That was obvious for a long time. Last big discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5255362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5255362
- ttrreeww 14y ago
  I remember that, but wow, that was only 36 days ago.

jrochkind1 14y ago

Not much to report... but an incredible love of ellipses. Maybe I burned a few periods, but, man, you have no idea what kinds of grammatical innovation are yet to come. Always remember... punctuate to live don't live to punctuate.

nchuhoai 14y ago

Quite a few commentators on this entry seem to debate whether LS was a "good" or "bad" thing. The ones debating "good", say it allowed consumers to get great deals, merchants to get coverage, and employees to be employed. The ones debating "bad", say it caused businesses to do dumb decisions and VC's to do dumb decisions. All in all, I'd say Groupon/LS was good for the world, because it is exactly to show what happens with these kind of VC-businesses. They need to scale large, and not all of them can become sustainable. Clearly, someone needs to get screwed in the mean time. We need more profilic failures like Groupon/LS, because obviously the VC model has been the holy grail for quite some time (less so now then lets say two years ago). I don't mean to hate on the VC model (like dhh for example), I like it a lot for many business models. In fact, I liked it for Groupon as well. We just should keep in mind what we are dealing with. Like so many times, information is the key, and the ones that got screwed over are usually the ones that trust blindly.

faukner 14y ago

http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/ http://www.forumbiodiversity.com/

kaa2102 14y ago

There are a lot of negative comments about LivingSocial's business model. The irony is that a lot of what I see on HN and in tech is about mobile, social media, and games.

dmbaggett 14y ago

I met Aaron when I was on a panel with him at Bootstrap Maryland, before Living Social was big. He was a class act then, and he obviously still is. Living Social -- more than any other company in the last 5 years -- showed that the DC area startup community is alive and well and can play with the big boys in the consumer internet space. LS almost single-handedly overcame the region's inferiority complex in this regard. I hope Aaron is sufficiently proud of the role he played there.

mailarchis 14y ago

There is a bit of irony in the timing. Living Socials first product was visual bookshelf. They pivoted to daily deals business. Fast forward 6 years, amazon acquires goodreads while all daily deal sites are struggling.