The Story Of Groupon: From Failure To An Industry-Changing, Profit Machine | Hacker News Reader

The Story Of Groupon: From Failure To An Industry-Changing, Profit Machine

mixergy.com

42 pointsAndrewWarner5 comments

Another good interview from Andrew at Mixergy. What is interesting here is how Andrew Mason, founder of Groupon, describes the idea of collective action and then applying that to commerce, what he calls social commerce. A good takeaway at that point is that the concept of collective action is far from exploited in the market place. Groupon exploits this concept in the commerce space but you could see that the idea has legs.

I like how Andrew Mason owns up to a mistake, around ~47min in, regarding a company they bought in Brazil that was creating discounts just to test the market without actually landing those deals. Good on him. Looks like they are going through some growing pains.

I'm very curious to know the experience of business owners who've used Groupon - I've just made a post questioning its value at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1490096. I'd love to get HN's feedback on whether or not we should use the service.

Never used Groupon, but you might want to try emailing/calling some of the Retailers that have used Groupon in the smaller cities and see firsthand how effective it is.

Might be hard to find a "Retail Owner" here on HN.

Thanks - that's a great idea. I actually am friends with the operator of one of these clones and she herself has expressed that it might hold dubious value for most business owners. I will try to hunt down some retailers offline who've actually worked with them.

There was an article about a bakery being overwhelmed by Groupon customers posted here a couple of months ago that you might find interesting: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338553

There was another article linked in that thread about a helicopter training school having a similar experience: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/03/19/groupon-market...

People in the HN thread I linked have other interesting things to say, too. From what I can tell, it looks like there's a ton of potential to get your name out there, but you will almost certainly have to be able to accept an initial loss to do so. I don't have any experience with it personally, though.

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