PayPal today announced Cash for Registers to encourage merchants to switch to PayPal-powered point-of-sale solutions. The program is part of the payment giant’s bid to be the kingpin among local merchants looking for lower-cost ways of accepting credit card payments. The announcement comes on the same day that Square launched Stand to complement its Square register product on iPad tablets and… → Read More
Groupon is once again expanding its portfolio of mobile payment services, putting it in closer competition with the likes of Square and PayPal’s here targeting local merchants: today it has released Groupon POS, which appears to be an iPad-specific version of its mobile payments service aimed at local merchants, working as a dashboard to make and track payments. → Read More
Groupon just reported its earnings for its first financial quarter of 2013. The company, which is still looking for a new CEO after the ouster of Andrew Mason in February, posted a $0.01 loss per share but says its non-GAAP EPS, excluding stock-based compensations, was $0.03. Its revenue was significantly higher than expected with $601.4 million in sales, compared to $0.02 earnings per share (EPS)… → Read More
The daily deals hype around Groupon, LivingSocial and all of their clones has markedly cooled down over the last few months, but that isn’t stopping Microsoft from launching Bing Offers, a new local deals aggregator for the U.S. market, today. The odd thing about this launch is that Bing previously offered a very similar feature called Bing Deals since 2011 – a service that now seems… → Read More
Groupon’s VP of mobile, David Katz, says that it has been “business as usual” at the daily deals company since the dramatic departure of founder/CEO Andrew Mason. “We’re still just focused on shipping new stuff,” Katz told TechCrunch in an interview. Today, that includes news of updates to Groupon’s iPhone and Android apps: it is adding a universal search feature that will let consumers use the… → Read More
This hasn’t been a great year for Foursquare. “Check-ins are no longer what they used to be,” as Ingrid Lunden observed last month. There seems to be a general consensus that “Foursquare keeps resembling Yelp more and more…” but that comparison isn’t necessarily flattering, especially since there’s little doubt that Yelp has much greater public mindshare.
Then former Square COO and current… → Read More
As the last of the dust settles on the departure of Groupon’s founder/CEO Andrew Mason, the daily deals and local commerce service today filed an 8-K form with the SEC to detail how it would be compensating his interim co-CEO replacements Eric Lefkofsky and Ted Leonsis; and also giving a sweetener bonus to one of its key staff, Jeffrey Holden, in 2014 and 2015. → Read More
The Verge yesterday posted a lengthy look at what went wrong at Groupon, the e-commerce business that recently outsted its CEO and founder Andrew Mason after reporting another disappointing quarter. Basing the story on interviews with a “dozen current and former employees, executives, investors, and board members,” the Verge’s conclusion seems to be that one of the biggest problems for the company… → Read More
Andrew Mason, CEO and founder of Groupon, has just been replaced by Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Vice Chairman Ted Leonisis, who will take over the new position of Office of the Chief Executive.
They will serve as interim co-CEOs while they hunt for a replacement to take over permanently. → Read More
Groupon has just put out its Q4 and full-year results. It has reported quarterly revenue of $638.8 million with an operating loss of $12.9 million and a loss per per share of 12 cents, falling short of analyst expectations on the EPS front — they had predicted $638.41 million in revenue and EPS of $0.03.
Those numbers show 30 percent revenue growth and a slightly smaller ($12.9 million… → Read More
When you think of Groupon, you immediately think of instant deals for restaurants and nail salons. That’s not all the company is about though, it’s about connecting people to businesses and helping you find interesting things to do in your area. Sure, it’s a business like any other company, but as we’ve come to learn, a lot of companies these days do non-profit work, mostly in the background. You… → Read More
Y Combinator company Glassmap, a location-aware app that was big back in the day (last year), has just announced that is has been acquired by Groupon. A representative from Groupon has confirmed to TechCrunch that the company has indeed acquired Glassmap and is ”excited to bring the team aboard.” This makes total sense, because Groupon needs to know where you are, who you’re… → Read More
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason last year set his company a goal of adding more value and diversity to its bread and butter business in daily deals, and today it took one more step in that direction: Groupon Payments — its dongle-based Square/PayPal Here competitor — has now been added to its Merchants app for Android handsets. → Read More
Groupon wants to be the king of local commerce, but with Groupon Goods it has a platform for online sales that compete with the likes of Amazon to sell goods from everyone everywhere. Today, it put another link into the second of these strategies with the acquisition of CommerceInterface, a channel management technology used in e-commerce operations that aggregate goods from multiple vendors. → Read More
Groupon got put through the meat-grinder last week as founder and CEO Andrew Mason defended himself and managed to hold onto his role after another terrible earnings quarter. Now Groupon is getting down to the business of streamlining: Mike DeLuca, the VP of sales for Groupon’s restaurant reservation system Savored (just bought in September), is now also VP of sales for Breadcrumb, the company’s… → Read More
Groupon shares (NASDAQ:GRPN) closed at 4.42, 11.62 percent above yesterday’s level. CEO Andrew Mason’s interview was highly anticipated today. Yesterday, AllThingsD reported that the board questioned Mason’s vision. → Read More
During Business Insider’s Ignition conference, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason commented yesterday’s stories about his role at the company. AllThingsD reported that the board was discussing whether the company needed a new CEO. Mason replied by stating that “it would be weird if the Board wasn’t discussing whether I’m the right guy for the job.” Groupon has gained… → Read More
Today, Groupon has officially found its new chief operating officer. The daily deals leader announced this afternoon that it has promoted Senior VP of Global Sales and Operations, Kal Raman, to COO, where he will continue to oversee the company’s global sales and operations and report to CEO Andrew Mason. → Read More
During today’s analyst conference call for Groupon’s third-quarter earnings, CEO Andrew Mason mentioned a new feature that’s being tested in a couple of cities. Now, if you look at the deal listings in New York and Chicago, you’ll see a box allowing you to search for specific types of deals, i.e. “pizza” or “lunch.”
Adding site search capabilities might not seem like a huge step forward, but… → Read More
Groupon just released its Q3 2012 earnings report, marking the company’s first full-year cycle of earnings reports since its IPO in November 2011. The company reported $568.6 million in revenue and a net operating income of $25.4 million. → Read More
Four months after buying restaurant-focused, point-of-sale app Breadcrumb, Groupon is putting the acquisition to work in its bid to grow its local commerce business. Today it is launching the iPad app nationwide across the U.S., following a limited pilot in New York — and is throwing in offering to sell users an iPad for those interested in trying it out. The news of Groupon launching more… → Read More
The churn at Groupon’s executive level continues apace. The company has just announced that it has appointed a new vice president for North America, Rob Kilgarriff, who is taking over the role from Chris Muhr. Earlier today Reuters reported that Chris Muhr was being shipped out to Europe, where he had first started his career with Groupon, to become the new SVP for the Europe, Middle East and… → Read More
Groupon continues its acquisition march to beef up its service and take itself beyond daily deals. Today it announced that it has bought Savored, a restaurant reservations and discount meal provider. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. → Read More
There was once probably a good reason for why Groupon needed to expand aggressively internationally when it did, buying up other daily deal operations, for fast, inorganic growth. But on today’s Q2 earnings call, those reasons didn’t really come up, with CEO Andrew Mason instead providing a lengthy explanation for why international, led by Europe, hasn’t been peforming very well for the company … → Read More
Groupon is gearing up to report quarterly earnings later this month, but in the meantime the daily deals giant has another issue on its hands: it’s been hit with a patent infringement lawsuit by Blue Calypso, a digital marketing firm that claims Groupon is infringing two of its patents, 7,664,516 and 8,155,679, focused on peer-to-peer marketing technology. What’s more, from the sounds of it, Blue… → Read More
A while back we wrote about a flaw in Groupon’s email link encryption, which revealed the emails of some Groupon users when “addx” was added into a Google search of Groupon’s site. We’ve been alerted that is still happening, with about 170 emails coming up when we searched (last time around it was less than 80).
When this last happened, Groupon director of engineering Shinji Kuwayama told us… → Read More
Groupon just announced via its blog that it has acquired Breadcrumb, the creators of an affordable point of sale system and iPad app that targets local restaurants.
While the terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, Groupon has made a run of acquisitions over the last six months, and this move is likely one being made for talent. Not only that but the daily deals behemoth is looking to… → Read More
Groupon just published its second quarterly earnings report after going public in 2011. The Chicago-based company made $559.3 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2012, up 89% year-over year. Groupon also announced that the total amount of money it collected from customers for Groupons sold (excluding taxes and estimated refunds) increased 103% from $668.2 million in the same quarter… → Read More
Just as we get news of some consolidation in the local content market in the UK, some news of expansion, too: Qype, the Yelp of Europe (and Yelp’s closest competitor in the region), today announced that the number of places reviewed on its site has reached 860,000, with the number of monthly unique visitors now at 25 million. It claims that this makes it the biggest reviews site in the region… → Read More
Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason today posted a letter to shareholders with some updated figures on how the company is doing, and a more specific outline of what Groupon plans to do to to move beyond daily deals: ”To become the operating system for local commerce.”
The move is a significant one as Groupon attempts to shore up investor confidence amidst a series of accounting issues, and the fact… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
