Remember when Groupon raised, like, a billion dollars? We certainly do.
Well, it looks like Groupon’s slide over the past month is bringing its last round of venture investors ever closer to breaking even. The stock has rebounded slightly this morning to $11.49, but the number to watch is $7.90.
That’s effectively what several top-tier Silicon Valley venture firms including Kleiner Perkins… → Read More
This post is contributed by Ben Jiang, editor of TechNode, a bilingual blog based in China.
Gaopeng, a joint venture between Groupon and Tencent, may be headed for a merger by the end of next month with FTuan, according to reports from local Chinese news agencies. Notably, FTuan is a rival Chinese daily deal service that Groupon’s local partner Tencent invested in. If such a deal happened, it… → Read More
As the daily deal space has become increasingly crowded over the last two years, local merchants increasingly feel pressured to run deals, but for many reasons, they end up overwhelmed by the prospect of managing those deals from start to finish, and the big deals players are failing to help them.
So, Setster has decided to do what LivingSocial, Woot, Gilt, and other deal providers are either… → Read More
Daily deals site Groupon today issued a pretty significant revision of the financial results it previously reported for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2011.
According to the company, it actually made $14.3 million less in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2011 than it previously reported — $492.2 million, compared to the previously stated $506.5 million. It also spent more in… → Read More
FeeFighters, a three-year old comparison shopping site for credit card processors, is announcing today it has been acquired by Groupon. The Chicago-based startup, which provides businesses with a way to find the best merchant account provider for their needs, has also been offering businesses other tools such as its new payment gateway called Samurai.
FeeFighters says that the acquisition will… → Read More
Since its big IPO last year, Groupon has been picking up the pace of international expansion. Today, for example, we were tipped an email written by Groupon Co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason to Groupon employees, which announced some big changes to international management, specifically in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) and Latin America.
Regardless of the fact that Groupon scooped up at… → Read More
After purchasing OpenCal, the makers of an automated online appointment scheduling app, back in September of last year for an undisclosed amount, Groupon quickly went about incorporating the technology. Before long, the company had announced Groupon Scheduler, a service designed to make it easy for both customers and merchants to quickly close the loop between offer, booking, and scheduling. As… → Read More
Now this is an interesting, if potentially flawed, concept. It’s called CoupFlip and it’s essentially a secondary market for Groupons, Amazon Deals, and the like. Say, for example, you buy a Groupon to the local stoat grooming place and you realize you don’t have a stoat. Before CoupFlip you’d have to hunt down the local chapter of the Stoat Lover’s Club and possibly sell your deal at a slight… → Read More
Another acquisition for Groupon, and a sign of how the e-commerce company is getting more focused on mobile as a route to future growth: it has picked up Kima Labs, which makes mobile barcode reading app Barcode Hero and mobile payment app TapBuy. The terms of the deal were not disclosed; we’re trying to find out.
The news comes just hours after news broke that Groupon had bought another mobile… → Read More
At the Goldman Sachs Internet and Technology Conference in San Francisco Thursday, Groupon Founder and CEO Andrew Mason took to the stage to talk about the daily deal behemoth’s newly-minted position as a public company, its roller coaster ride both leading up to and since its IPO, as well as plans for the future.
There was a lot of pressure bearing down on Groupon in the months leading up to… → Read More
When Groupon was gearing up for its IPO last year, there was a lot of talk about whether the company would be able to sustain its business on a diet that mainly consisted of daily deals. Today, a little sign of what Groupon might be cooking up for its next course.
Over in Germany, Groupon has launched a new site, Groupon Deals, an Amazon-like storefront that sells a range of goods, from boots… → Read More
Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason was interviewed by Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick on stage at the annual DLD confab in Munich, Germany.
Below are my notes – Mason’s responses are slightly paraphrased. → Read More
You can say a lot of things about Groupon, but not that they lack a great sense of humor over there. This morning, the company distributed a press release touting a new invention called Clicky, the Clickable Value-Wheel (make sure you watch the behind-the-scenes video below too).
The company invites players to sign in with their Facebook account and then spin the wheel to potentially score a… → Read More
To combat the lack of transparency around customer satisfaction with daily deals, Groupon today launched a new version of its Merchant Center. It includes the real-time percentage of deal customers who would recommend the business to a friend, plus their comments. Customer satisfaction is a big question for merchants wondering if they should start or continue running daily deals. Data on… → Read More
Groupon has continued its (talent) acquisition spree with the recent purchase of a hot Silicon Valley startup before they even launched – and with extremely little fanfare.
We’ve learned that Campfire Labs, which was founded by ex-Googler Sakina Arsiwala (previously Head of International at YouTube) and her husband, social search technology expert Naveen Koorakula (previously at search… → Read More
Sigh. Here we go again.
A patent troll called Mount Hamilton Partners has filed two separate patent infringement lawsuits against daily deals juggernaut Groupon and Google, which also operates a digital couponing business called Google Offers.
Mount Hamilton Partners, which purports to be an ‘investor in technology companies’ on its website, garnered headlines about two and a half years ago… → Read More
Now this makes a lot of sense. Groupon this morning announced its latest product, dubbed Groupon Scheduler, an online appointment service that makes it easier for both end users and merchants to go from offer to actual booking.
Groupon Scheduler is based on technology from OpenCal, a Vancouver, Canada-based startup Groupon apparently – quietly – acquired in September 2011. The new product will… → Read More
Looking for a last-minute holiday gift? How about that Groupon you never used? Daily deal vouchers wouldn’t actually make bad presents if there was a way to gift them that didn’t involve an email printout tucked into a card. That’s where Presentify.me, which turns deal vouchers into attractive gift certificates, can help. → Read More
You don’t need to work on Wall Street to have seen this one coming: Today, for the first time since its NASDAQ debut on November 4th, Groupon has fallen below its IPO price, which initially placed the company’s stock at $20 per share. The company’s stock opened (at first trade) at $28 per share, with a market cap of $17.8 billion.
It’s currently hovering at about $17.30 per share, down nearly… → Read More
Forget Festivus, today sees the return of the real fake holiday Grouponicus. The site from daily deal giant Groupon is back for the second time with a wide selection of curated deals Groupon users can buy for their friends as holiday gifts.
Last year, Grouponicus was available to 15 cities, but today’s launch sees Grouponicus in 41 cities across the U.S. and Canada, including big metro regions… → Read More
Yelp and Groupon are both being sued by a company called Mobile Commerce Framework, an obscure patent troll that earlier filed a similar patent infringement suit against Foursquare.
On April 6, 2010, Mobile Commerce Framework (MCF) was issued US Patent No. 7,693,752 by the USPTO, for reasons unknown to mankind. In summary, this patent describes:
(After the jump) → Read More
After going from selling slippers with flashlights to being a 10,000 employee-strong business in three years, Groupon had its initial public offering today, to much fanfare and well, the opposite reaction. The offering was priced at $20 and experienced an exuberant opening pop of $28, which after a day of trading settled down a bit to close at $26. → Read More
After some timing drama, daily deal site Groupon finally has begun trading on the NASDAQ this morning, in the most hotly anticipated and largest Internet company IPO since Google. The company — which trades under the ticker $GRPN — priced its shares at $20 last night, but began trading at $28, an increase of 40%.
Like LinkedIn, Groupon is only floating a small amount of shares, 35… → Read More
‘Tis the season of the IPO. So far, 2011 has seen companies like LinkedIn, Pandora, Yandex, Zillow, and RenRen come to market. As you’ve heard, Groupon and Zynga are next up in the IPO pipeline, with both companies arriving on public markets within weeks of each other. Groupon, barring some catastrophic event, will begin trading publicly on NASDAQ November 4th, with shares set at $20 a pop at a… → Read More
Groupon has priced its IPO at $20 a share according to reports, which would give the company a $12.7 billion valuation and mean that it’d be seeking $690 million in tomorrow’s offering, by floating only 5.4 percent of its shares. → Read More
At this point, it’s no secret: Gaopeng (Groupon’s nascent effort in China) is a train wreck. By September of this year, the seven-month old endeavor had already accumulated $46.4 million in net losses with just $2.1 million in revenue. Meanwhile, a number of competitors in the region are predicting profitability within months.
In today’s “Attack Of The Clones” panel at Disrupt Beijing, a few of… → Read More
Despite a couple big-name companies like Groupon and Zynga lining up for IPOs, the demand for private company stock on alternative exchanges keeps rising. Private stock transactions on SecondMarket in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. In the third quarter alone, there were $167 million worth of transactions on… → Read More
With the Groupon roadshow underway and the countdown to its IPO expected to culminate on November 4th, the long-anticipated arrival of the daily deals giant on the public markets is almost at hand. But the journey hasn’t been without its fair share of hiccups. While the company currently owns a 54 percent share of the daily deals market and there were some bright spots in its third quarter… → Read More
Groupon has taken a lot of heat over the last six months, some of it deserved, some of it perhaps a bit excessive. There are definitely legitimate concerns about Groupon’s value for small businesses and merchants, but lofty valuations aside, we have to remember that Groupon is still a young company, and the future remains unwritten.
Now, while Andrew Mason wearing a suit and a tie while… → Read More
Andrew Mason (30), who co-founded Groupon and currently serves as its CEO, hasn’t often been spotted wearing a business suit and tie.
But when you’re pitching investors on an initial public offering, looking to raise over half a billion dollars at a $11.4 billion valuation, I guess you kinda have to.
This morning, Groupon’s IPO roadshow video presentation was published and is publicly … → Read More
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