The lesson learned here isn't that FeeFighters fucked up their acquisition. It's that you should be especially wary building businesses that depend almost entirely on another startup.

Put another way, you should only use services that are pretty obviously going to stay around and aren't just a few years old with no solid track record.

A service may be perfect for your business to hook into, but is it really realistic to expect something like Samurai to stick around for 5-10 years?

EDIT: I would also say that yes, FeeFighters _did_ royally eff up the acquisition process in that they threw their customers under the bus. It lends credence to the idea that they probably had no customers to begin with.

Also, GroupOn is not the enemy here. They acquired technology, talent, whatever. It's in their best interest to negotiate terms that are favorable to GroupOn. If FeeFighters didn't go to bat for their current customers, why would GroupOn volunteer to take on that burden?