There were mainstream articles published about how bad for businesses Groupons were wayyyyy early on in their existence. I'm sure it can work for businesses wi

There were mainstream articles published about how bad for businesses Groupons were wayyyyy early on in their existence. I'm sure it can work for businesses with a low marginal cost and a product that's designed to be a recurring purchase (e.g. yoga studios that aren't already fully booked), but businesses apparently didn't take the time to do these estimates. For a long, long time, Groupon has just been burning businesses (who tend not to come back) and counting on hype to keep signing up new ones. I can't see how this wasn't clear to Groupon years ago. That is to say, I'm sure the founders _did_ know in the first few months, and either were fine with fooling investors/businesses or were desperately hoping that they'd find some way to "pivot".