And so it begins. Groupon this morning published the expected price range of its shares, to be sold in an upcoming initial public offering, in an SEC filing.
The daily deals company plans to sell 30 million shares at $16 to $18 a pop, which would see Groupon raise between $480 million and $540 million. This would give Groupon a valuation as high as $11.4 billion. → Read More
With Groupon reportedly set to begin its IPO road show early next week, it’s a good time to revisit the deal site. Is Groupon a great, lucrative deal for its merchants, a swindle or something even worse?
Rather than talk to analysts or observers, we decided to go directly to three Groupon merchants to find out if selling Groupons is a good deal. We picked 3 business in the San Francisco Bay… → Read More
Groupon this morning announced that it re-branded its India business from SoSasta.com (which it acquired earlier this year) to … not Groupon India but Crazeal.com.
(It probably has something to do with the fact that Groupon.in was squatted by some Indian company.) → Read More
Groupon has lost its second COO in six months.
Back in March of this year, Rob Solomon, who joined the company in March 2010, announced that he would be leaving the company. A month later, Groupon hired former Google VP Margo Georgiadis to replace him.
And today, just five months after she joined the executive team, Groupon is announcing that Georgiadis is leaving the company to re-join… → Read More
In light of reports that the company was canceling its investor roadshow and postponing its IPO, daily deals aggregator Yipit has come up with some positive information regarding to Groupon’s trajectory in August, namely that it had a banner month revenue-wise. The daily deals frontrunner grew 13% during the last month of summer, increasing its revenue to $120.7 million from $106 million in July. → Read More
After its debut in June of this year, Google’s deals service Google Offers is now expanding to five more cities: Austin, Boston, D.C., Denver and Seattle. It’s already up-and-running in the original test market of Portland, plus the Bay Area and New York City.
As of today, each of the new cities has at least one offer available, including those for local restaurants, retail establishments and… → Read More
Earlier this year at All Things D, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said one of his regrets was not opening an office in Silicon Valley earlier. The implication was that he was talking about not taking advantage of the superior coding talent, but I took it another way.
Being in Silicon Valley is like playing for the Yankees. You get knocked around more than anywhere else, the glare of the media… → Read More
A new daily deals site catering to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LBGT) and allied communities has just launched, and it’s called Gaypon. The site provides its subscribers with daily offers from local and regional businesses - but only those businesses known to be gay-friendly.
In addition, Gaypon says a portion of its proceeds will be donated to local and national LGBT… → Read More
Yipit, the site that aggregates and recommends daily deals based on users’ locations and interests (and raised $6 million back in June from a host of VCs), released some interesting trend data today on the daily deals space. Overall, July was not a memorable month for the daily deals industry, though there were a few clear winners, including everyone’s favorite deals site, the big kahuna, Groupon. → Read More
Yesterday, I wrote a post after I noticed that Groupon had registered groupongoods.com, groupongoods.info and other related domain names, hypothesizing that the fast-growing daily deals startup might be plotting a dedicated website (section) for selling tangible products such as household items, consumer electronics or even groceries at a discount.
I speculated that ‘Groupon Goods’ would be a… → Read More
Last week, daily deals giant Groupon registered a bunch of domain names with ‘groupongoods’ in them (.com, .net, .us, .info, .biz and interestingly, .fr). Evidently, securing those domain names doesn’t necessarily mean the company is going to debut a service by the name ‘Groupon Goods’ soon or even in the distant future, but let’s hypothesize for a moment that this is exactly what they’re planning… → Read More
Daily deals juggernaut Groupon managed to significantly slash marketing costs last quarter, but its net loss in the second quarter of this year has more than doubled compared to last year as it hired more than 1,000 new employees, according to an SEC filing published this morning. The company is still growing like gangbusters but losing money like crazy in the process.
The updated financial… → Read More
With Groupon on the verge of going public, and Google, Facebook, and just about everyone else rushing to copy the idea, there’s no question that the model has been a huge hit with consumers. But there are still some questions as to just how much it helps out the businesses offering the deals. It’s essentially a loss leader model, so the success metrics can be tricky to accurately gauge. Bloomspot… → Read More
“I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed.”
I’m reminded of Daniel Plainview’s admission in There Will Be Blood when thinking about Google.
While the company is still largely beloved by the public, sentiment seems to have turned against them amongst their peers, and even amongst many of the startups around Silicon Valley. While these tensions have been building for months… → Read More
Groupon has just announced its acquisition of Obtiva, a Chicago based Ruby on Rails firm.
From the Groupon blog:
“We’re constantly impressed by how capable Obtiva developers are and we’re really looking forward to expanding the team. If you’re interested in a job in Engineering at Groupon (or a host of other departments, including Housewares and Linens) check out the open positions… → Read More
Well, this is a potentially huge partnership. After extended negotiations, Groupon deals will finally start to appear in Foursquare. And it’s not just the normal daily Groupons that will appear, but also the newer mobile Groupon Now deals. The inclusion of instant Groupon Now deals sets this partnership apart from the other daily deal partnerships Foursquare announced earlier this month with… → Read More
When it comes to local commerce, the ultimate prize everyone is going after right now is how to close the redemption loop. The redemption loop starts when a consumer sees an ad or an offer for a local merchant, and is completed when the consumer makes a purchase and that purchase can be tracked back to the offer. If you know who is actually redeeming offers and how much they are spending, you… → Read More
This morning American Express is launching a new deals platform in partnership with Facebook that should make big waves in the payments and offers space.
With the new platform, merchants will be able to target deals at American Express cardholders on the Facebook platform. Initial launch partners include H&M, Sports Authority, Dunkin’ Donuts, Sheraton, Westin, Travelocity and Celebrity… → Read More
An anonymous tipster tells us Zappedy, a company that offered various technology products for local businesses, has been acquired by Groupon, information that turns out to be correct according to a message posted on the former’s website (which, sadly, hasn’t been archived by the Wayback Machine). → Read More
Groupon has filed new S-1 for its IPO where its looking to raise at least $750 million. What’s changed from the last one? Well according to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, the daily deals site has added underwriters Williams, RBC, Loop, Citadel, JPMorgan, Allen & Co, BofA, Citi, Barclays and Deutsche in addition to Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. → Read More
Foursquare this morning announced distribution partnerships with daily deal providers LivingSocial, Gilt City, zozi, BuyWithMe and AT&T. Missing from the list are Groupon, Yelp and Google Offers.
With these deals, Foursquare is attempting to solve two problems: liquidity in deals and its own lack of a revenue model. → Read More
Bubble or not, 2011 may go down as the year of the tech IPO. Not since the last bubble have we seen so many technology companies clamoring to go public. And halfway through the year, we still have many more companies who will be listing on either the NASDAQ or the NYSE in the next six months. Here’s a roundup of the tech companies that have gone public, where they are trading now, and who we can… → Read More
If you watch the nightly news, you would assume there’s a murder on every block, and if you’ve been reading TechCrunch recently, you would assume Groupon is murdering a small business in every city.
Given the hundreds of thousands of merchants who have run daily deals in the past year, it is inevitable that a few will have had bad experiences. However, to assume that a handful of these… → Read More
While the debate as to whether group buying as whole is a viable business model rages on post-Groupon S-1, there’s no doubt that these social deal things keep sprouting up — Yesterday someone introduced themselves to me as the CEO of a Groupon for moms (and yes I thought it was a good idea).
We’ve got Groupons for techies, a Groupon for Jews, what will there be a Groupon for next!? Wait, please… → Read More
The IPO window is now wide open, with everyone from Zynga to Groupon rushing towards it. Nobody knows how long that window will stay open (rule of thumb is 18 months), so better go public while you can. But today’s IPO filing from Zynga came particularly fast. According to one source, the actual writing of the 150+ page S-1 document was one of the fastest documentation processes for an IPO of… → Read More
The next phase of growth for local deals will be mobile. Groupon knows this, and so does Yelp, which today is rolling out Yelp Deals to its iPhone and Android apps. An update to its mobile apps that is getting pushed out today will add a new deals icon to the app. When you click on it you can see a list of nearby Yelp Deals for discounts at restaurants, spas, and other businesses. (These… → Read More
Another day, another unfortunate piece of news out of Groupon’s international operations. Today it’s that SoSata, Groupon’s Indian site, got hacked. In a letter to users, Groupon encouraged them to change user names and passwords and assured them no financial information was compromised because none is stored on the site. Compared to the flood of angry headlines about Groupon of late, this… → Read More
There’s a lot of hate out there these days from the press when it comes to the daily deals industry. I’m looking at you, TechCrunch. Sure, Groupon has become the whale in this industry, but that doesn’t mean Groupon constitutes the entire industry. Sure, while Groupon may sometimes structure lousy deals for merchants, it doesn’t mean the entire daily deal business model isn’t sustainable or… → Read More
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