After he debuted the latest in a series of wacky stunts, dating service and scholarship fund Grouspawn, I caught up with Groupon CEO Andrew Mason backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about the recent Groupon backlash, the company’s success problem and how transparency can scale to hundreds of millions of dollars in deals in 150 cities around the world.
Highlights:
“We wanted to make sure that Groupon babies were the smartest babies out there …”
“It’s cheaper to allow customers to punish us quickly, and we’ll take the heat on that if it leads to a better product.”
“Everything that was part of the Groupon experience when it was in one city all exists on the same level now.”
“If you’re open with people and provide context for the decisions that your making, customers will stick with you.”
“Are you wearing bronzer?”
Currently valued at $1.35 billion, Groupon (which does not currently disclose its traffic and userbase stats) is unique in its explosive growth, having created an entire movement of daily deals site clones.
Groupon features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in more than 565 cities around the world. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, Groupon can offer deals that aren’t available elsewhere. Groupon brings buyers and sellers together in a fun and collaborative way that offers the consumer an unbeatable deal, and businesses a large number of new customers. To date, it has saved consumers more than $300 million and claims it...
Andrew Mason is the founder of Groupon as well as The Point, the collective action platform from which Groupon was born. Andrew is originally from Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Mason moved to Chicago in 1999 to attend Northwestern University and graduated with a degree in music. He went on to attend University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy only to drop out three months later.
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