After a rocky showing in its first earnings report, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason revealed his grand ambitions for the company in a letter to stockholders today. It’s not just about daily deals anymore: Mason wants Groupon to become the “operating …
Local advertising startup Signpost grew its business a little bit Tuesday with a $3.75 million investment and a new employee. Christopher DePatria, former head of sales at AOL Patch, joined the team as the vice president of revenue.
Signpost tackles …
Groupon’s board of directors is playing musical chairs as the downtrodden daily deals company attempts to address fallout from an accounting restatement that sent its stock price plummeting.
The company, now trading at more than 60 percent off its initial …
After finding success in Sweden and across Europe for its effort to revitalize the gift card industry, Wrapp is finally launching in the U.S. today. And to prove it’s serious, the company has more than 25 retailers signed up to …
In the first quarter of 2012, investor confidence rose to the highest point it’s been in more than a year. The latest Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index — which measures how much statup investing confidence VCs have — shows …
Morality in Media is calling for a nation-wide boycott of daily deal site Groupon.com for what it claims are tours of a “torture porn” facility.
“Employees lead 90-minute tours for guests aged 18 & older through five floors of historic …
Guest Post
Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of Instagram was the topic on everyone’s lips at Mega Startup Weekend last Saturday and Sunday. The world’s most expensive “Like” has clearly gotten tech entrepreneurs buzzing about who will be next. While there’s no way …
In the midst of all the turmoil of Groupon, which is now trading at a market cap below $8 billion and broke below the $12 mark in trading today, the company's hometown newspaper had a sitdown with Groupon chairman Eric Lefkofsky. As a former journalist who once aspired to work at the Tribune, I'm embarrassed for them.
I've spent much of the last year talking about how the sites small businesses rely on to advertise and promote themselves -- think Yelp and Groupon -- are failing them. In fact, helping small businesses at the local level is extremely challenging for technology companies, for the following reasons:
Groupon’s business stateside has been embroiled in an accounting scandal that cut the stock price in half. But its international operations are responsible for two-thirds of the company’s revenue. Yesterday the company announced that Marc Samwer, who along with his …
Guest Post
With all of the doom and gloom surrounding Groupon, which reached yet another all-time low in trading today, I thought it would be useful to write up my best practices for buying Groupons and other daily deals.
Yes, despite being …
Executives at daily deals company Groupon are responsible for egregious corporate wrongdoing, a new suit alleges.
In a derivative complaint filed last Wednesday in Illinois, Groupon shareholder Theresa Monturano is suing the executives and board members for breach of fiduciary …
Guest Post
This is the Groupon Promise, prominently plastered all over the Groupon site:
If the experience using your Groupon ever lets you down, we’ll make it right or return your purchase. Simple as that.
But when I put it to the …
Guest Post
Groupon faced a deluge of bad press and unfavorable comparisons this week following its accounting restatement on March 30. This morning, I searched for Groupon and got this on Google News:
Notice that Google News algorithms put the Enron logo
…
Guest Post
We’ve heard quite a few opinions about who’s to blame for Groupon’s IPO fiasco ever since the company announced a restatement of its earnings last Friday and indicated that it had material weakness in its internal controls. Andrew Ross Sorkin …
Guest Post
Chicago-based investment research firm Morningstar can’t make the numbers in Groupon’s restatement add up. In a research note it sent to clients, who are institutional investors, it wrote:
While several of the financial revisions seem inconsistent, we were surprised by …
Guest Post
People frequently ask me about how LivingSocial and Google Offers are different from Groupon.
In many ways, they are the same. Any model that gives businesses cash early on in exchange for a promise of service to be delivered later …
The data is in: The first quarter of 2012 was a roller coaster ride of initial public offerings and unexpected power-plays.
Twenty companies held IPOs, raising a total of $1.4 billion in the first three months of the year, according …
UPDATE: Groupon’s share price is now down more than 15 percent for the day.
Groupon’s stock has been falling since it revealed on Friday that it was revising its first quarter earnings to reflect a larger than expected loss. With …
Guest Post
Groupon was forced to restate fourth quarter earnings, sending its stock down 6% in after-hours trading. This surprised me as much as my $2 investment in the Mega Millions jackpot not paying off.
The reasons for Groupon’s restatement were higher …
