Interview with Andrew Mason, CEO, Groupon, Who was just offered $5.3B by Google

Posted by: Tim Reha | Friday, November 26, 2010 | 0 Comments | | Share

Groupon is creating a big buzz on the web on sites like Techmeme.com this week with news of a possible acquisition by Google in the $2.5 Billion dollar range. Wait, lets take that up to $5.3 Billion according to the Wall Street Journal’s All Thing’s Digital Blog post.

Web: http://www.Groupon.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/groupon
Andrew Mason on Twitter: http://twitter.com/andrewmason

Growth: Adding 100 new employees per month!

About: “Groupon negotiates huge discounts—usually 50-90% off—with popular businesses. We send the deals to thousands of subscribers in our free daily email, and we send the businesses a ton of new customers. That’s the Groupon magic.”

Groupon is one of the super hot internet companies that performed what is known in the industry as a “Pivot” as they changed their core business model when they tested the idea of a group coupon. When the idea stuck they went “all in” and build a billion dollar enterprise in an amazingly short amount of time.  Goupon tapped the new viral social media layer of the internet that has exploded in the past four years. One friend with a natural health store posted a Groupon and gained 250+ customers from one deal.

Around the globe the Groupon business model has been knocked off from China to Brazil. Dozen’s of variants are now competing in the same place. Even Facebook and other large sites are creating their own version of hyper-local, coupon + viral social media syndication offerings.

Interview with Andrew Mason, Co-Founder and CEO, Groupon.com

I had the pleasure to meet Groupon’s CEO and Co-founder Andrew Mason at DEMO Fall 2010 in Silicon Valley this past September. The interview starts off a little cold as we were just coming off of lunch and a 24 hour burn operating with minimal sleep, leading DEMO’s social media team.

Later in the interview I get to ask how does a hyper growth CEO maintain sanity while working so many hours under huge pressure? The answer is you do not take vacations or even weekends off as every day off puts you back a day or more. That is the general idea for entrepreneurship - work very hard and compress your work career into an intense time-frame with no time to enjoy live. Then gamble and pray for luck so you have a lucrative exit and may relax in style.

It is amazing that these billion dollar internet deals still take place more than a decade after the internet gold rush in the late 1990’s.