Groupon Not Doing So Well On Wall Street 140
bdking writes "Shares of the daily-deals site were up Tuesday, but Groupon's ride on Wall Street since going public in early November has been almost all downhill. And there's no evident catalyst to reverse the slide."
From the looks of it, Groupon is blowing all of its money attempting to expand in the face of ever-growing competition in a market with trivial start-up costs.
Show me the money (Score:2, Interesting)
How does a company with a lack of value go on the stock market, IPO and expect there value to go up? This is the big world of money, show me the money!
Re:Show me the money (Score:5, Insightful)
It's simple: They IPO'd. They don't give a shit about their stock price; they have your money. An IPO is always a bad buy-in because they'll do everything in the world to inflate their stock price. The IPO brings cash to the business; then us traders trade little sheets of paper back and forth for some imaginary value, hoping that we can figure out when the value is going to stop going up and then distribute our papers to other idiots, then buy them back when the value is going to stop going down. In this way we get other paper (called money) in greater quantities than the little papers (called stock) that we're trading around.
Facebook will do this too. They'll IPO, you'll hear singing praises about how this is THE IPO you want to get on--it's friggin' Facebook. You'll see their stock price go up for a day or two after. Then down it comes. LNKD did the same thing.
Re:Show me the money (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Show me the money (Score:5, Informative)
it's basically a ponzi scheme.
Nope, not even close.
The situation is analogous to "begs the question". "begs the question" has a technical very specific philosophical meaning but in modern prose it almost exclusively means "Insert wordy semi-scholastic filler phrase here". Also see "price point" instead of "price", etc etc. Hell, see "etc" too.
In modern American speech, "ponzi scheme" is a semi-scholastic phrase meaning "it sucks" or "I don't like it" or "they're crooks". It does have a real technical meaning and describes a criminal activity which has nothing at all to do with your explanation in any form. Ironically (irony is another often re-imagined word) their sales/finance strategy is vaguely ponzi like, in the sense that all corporate sales/finance strategies are when they reinvest any profits in the company, but not really, not in a criminal sense anyway, and certainly not in the market explanation you provided.
I can't think of a way to run a ponzi in/over/with a market like you describe... maybe a boiler room operation cooperating with false price quotes could pull it off?
Note that I'm not defending them; they appear based on lots of journalist stories to have published fraudulent financial data. That would make them frauds, not ponzi operators. I'm just saying it does no one on either side, any good, to describe a bank robber as a kidnapper, or describe a horse thief as a murderer.
Re:Show me the money (Score:5, Informative)
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no. it means you pay out the early suckers with new suckers money. that is the definition of a ponzi scheme. when you run out of new suckers the whole thing breaks down.
Yeah, but that's exactly what they're not doing. The way you run a ponzi in an IPO situation is you IPO, take the money, pay it out as dividends, stock price goes up, sell more stock at high price, pay the money out as more dividends, repeat repeat repeat until the last step is instead of paying out the stock sale as dividends, you run to Argentina or whatever is trendy now a days. Think Mr Madoff except his escape didn't quite work out, or obviously, historically, Mr Ponzi himself. That's not even remot
Re:Show me the money (Score:5, Interesting)
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There is nothing on the horizon for them that can pump up the price short of people (new suckers) thinking they'll get to flip it to someone else. This is very much like a ponzi scheme.
No, it is very much like an improperly identified, yet accurate, well summarized, well written, and fairly elegant one line description of the endgame of "greater fool theory".
The wikipedia article isn't that great, but:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory [wikipedia.org]
If you have an editor account on wiki, you could probably cut and paste your one liner into that article as a description of conditions at the end stages of a GFT operation.
GFT is the most profitable investment strategy during a bubble. During
Re:Show me the money (Score:5, Funny)
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That's the only font his Remington can handle... you insensitive clod!
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There is nothing on the horizon for them that can pump up the price short of people (new suckers) thinking they'll get to flip it to someone else.
Congratulations. You've just defined Wall Street in a nutshell.
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You're wrong - Groupon is a Ponzi scheme (Score:5, Interesting)
They have admitted in their filings that they are using the float from both the income from new sales, as well as the hold-backs on the money they owe merchants (they can take 3 to 4 months to pay out) to support their business.
They don't have any profits once they pay their sales reps and the merchants they owe money to - they've also failed to put aside the money from unused groupons - most consumers don't know that in many states they can claim a refund from groupon up to 5 years later for unused tickets.
First attorney-general who goes after them sinks them.
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They have admitted in their filings that they are using the float from both the income from new sales, as well as the hold-backs on the money they owe merchants (they can take 3 to 4 months to pay out) to support their business.
Dude that is every manufacturing plant that has operated in the last century, or at least post-first-great-depression, not a scam at all. See "net 30 account" etc. Also see restaurants, retail stores, some warehouse operations, darn near any business involving "move this here, in exchange for this money, eventually".
Now if you lie about it, and put that debt down as a cash asset on the balance sheet, or if you play games to avoid placing it on the cashflow statement, that is financial fraud.
If you violate
Re:You're wrong - Groupon is a Ponzi scheme (Score:4, Interesting)
1. What's with the "Dude" bit?
2. The difference is that most businesses, after paying their suppliers, are expected to show a profit. Groupon is operating at a net loss. A very LARGE net loss. This is because their sales costs are so high.
They did lie. They got caught. They had to restate their "earnings."
They don't care - they're losing money hand over fist.
These are NOT "manufacturers coupons" - these are promises of the future sale of a good for money already received. As such, the consumer has, in many states, a year to demand a refund, and in some states up to 5 years.
This is settled consumer law.
They are not doing 30 days net. They owe more than their current receivables. They are insolvent. The only thing that keeps them going is (1) the cash infusion from the IPO - otherwise they would have shut their doors by the end of the year, and (2) the money from current sales, which is used to pay off past sales - same as a Ponzi scheme.
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same as a Ponzi scheme
Dude, please. Not this garbage again.
Re:You're wrong - Groupon is a Ponzi scheme (Score:5, Insightful)
> The only thing that keeps them going is (1) the cash infusion from the IPO - otherwise they would have shut their doors by the end of the year, and (2) the money from current sales, which is used to pay off past sales - same as a Ponzi scheme.
The Groupon business model is lousy, their business have no intrinsic value, but all of this is clear to whoever wants to get a piece of the action. Buying Groupon stock might not be a sound investment, the IPO might be a mere financial tactic on their part to bring in money and cash out, but that does not make it a criminal activity.
Saying that the Groupon thing is a Ponzi scheme is like spitting in the face of Madoff's victims. Saying that teabaggers are fascists is making fun of the people who were tortured and killed in Mussolini's jails. Saying that my 55 years old neighbor who married a 19 year-old is a pedophile is disrespectful of those who had their 5 year-old abused by the bus driver. Saying that OWS is a revolution is an insult to the people who died to kick out dictators.
Words are important.
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Saying that the Groupon thing is a Ponzi scheme is like spitting in the face of Madoff's victims. Saying that teabaggers are fascists is making fun of the people who were tortured and killed in Mussolini's jails. Saying that my 55 years old neighbor who married a 19 year-old is a pedophile is disrespectful of those who had their 5 year-old abused by the bus driver. Saying that OWS is a revolution is an insult to the people who died to kick out dictators.
If I was a chick I would want you so bad right now.
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No, saying that Groupon is a Ponzi scheme is NOT "spitting in the face of Madoff's victims." So stop with the over-wrought hand-wringing hyperbole.
That some Ponzi schemes make it to the stock market isn't news. After all, Madoff was a chairman of NASDAQ.
Re:You're wrong - Groupon is a Ponzi scheme (Score:4, Insightful)
That some Ponzi schemes make it to the stock market isn't news. After all, Madoff was a chairman of NASDAQ.
I heard that at one time he stopped to take a piss in a KFC in southern Alabama, so nobody will be surprised to learn that fast food chains are a Ponzi scheme. Also he was born in April, making him a Taurus, which clearly implies that Ford is a Ponzi scheme (this is why they did not need bailout money).
Seriously, this whole discussion and the bastardization of "Ponzi Scheme" reminds me of this episode in the Simpsons when Lisa goes to a girl school, and in the math class the teacher asks: "is the number 7 odd, or just different".
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2. The difference is that most businesses, after paying their suppliers, are expected to show a profit. Groupon is operating at a net loss. A very LARGE net loss. This is because their sales costs are so high.
Losses are quite common for years in new businesses. Investors get involved because they think when the business matures it will become profitable.
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It is May 2nd for Groupon, so insiders are going down with it http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/22/technology/groupon_stock/index.htm [cnn.com]
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The real insiders have already milked the cash infusions that the initial investors have pumped into the company. They're good to go.
The initial investors (the ones who put up the VC) are perhaps the ones who are nervous right now.
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it's basically a ponzi scheme
You mean: a Grouponzi scheme
Re:Show me the money (Score:4, Informative)
Slashdot just uses whatever monospace font you have configured - it's not his fault you have Courier New.
In Firefox you can configure that in the Content tab in the preferences. I use Inconsolata and I find his post very readable.
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What do you mean, "remove code"?
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Bullshit.
An IPO is not always a bad buy-in. You have the underwriters who have an incentive to underprice to keep their institutional clients on the good side. You have the venture capitalists (who given it is an IPO tend to be involved) who want to keep the underwriters happy. So often they win out against the insiders who want the highest price possible and you have a good buy.
of course if the company is a worthless piece of overvalued junk then so will be the IPO.
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Interesting. Is that what happened to Google?
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On the other hand, Google IPO'd at $85 in 2004 and is at just under $600 now.
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Wow google took off fast. It only lost for about half a month or so, $108 to $100, then went through the roof. I mean that's still bigger than the standard 6% stop loss, but yeah. (Google shows Google's first day as August 20 2004 at $108, and September 3 as the bottom; I don't see the original $85). Yahoo says Aug 19 2004 at $100 ... so yeah, good buy in.
how did this happen? Did Google not overhype its IPO, or did Google take a large holding in Google stock? Or is this a double-dip tactic, where the
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Google raise in price over their IPO price because their value as a company rose (which the money help speed up the growth). That is the true purpose of an IPO, raising money to grow the company faster and in return, the investors profit from that growth. Buying into an IPO is buying into the company's future growth.
Note: This has nothing to do with short term trading in which gambles on the stock buyers rather then the companies. They serve a role in making prices much more unstable causing much greater fl
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$85 was the initial listing price, it was over $108 at the end of the day. As to how this happened, there's a few reasons. First, at the time nobody really knew what Google was worth, there was still some belief that their Search was worth more than their advertising, because their was a strong belief at the time that internet advertising wasn't worth that much. Which brings us to the second reason, which is that it was 2004, and the dot com bubble was still pretty fresh in peoples minds, and thus people
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How does a company with a lack of value go on the stock market, IPO and expect there value to go up? This is the big world of money, show me the money!
I thought of them more as a company without an original idea and without a better edge on execution. That only leaves luck to run your business on.
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trying to figure out how this would work (Score:5, Funny)
If 50,000 people each agree to buy 10 shares of AAPL, Apple will give them the stock for 20 percent off and then give half the proceeds to Groupon?
Nah, I don't think they'd go for that.
Re:trying to figure out how this would work (Score:5, Funny)
Re:trying to figure out how this would work (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:trying to figure out how this would work (Score:5, Funny)
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Nobody's seeing the humor in that comment? Give that guy at least a +1 funny.
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Where I live, groupon only offers services at a discount of marked up price. So, the going rate for a non-X rated short massage is $25 and we'll mark it up to $100 and offer it via groupon at half off only $50. ditto car detailing at half their normal $60/hour rates, landscape services where they pay the illegal $5 cash after mowing the lawn and charging you $80 but now only half price, etc. Does anyone get actual "stuff" from groupon deals, like walk away with a physical object?
A better analogy, would b
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Where I live, groupon only offers services at a discount of marked up price. So, the going rate for a non-X rated short massage is $25 and we'll mark it up to $100 and offer it via groupon at half off only $50. ditto car detailing at half their normal $60/hour rates, landscape services where they pay the illegal $5 cash after mowing the lawn and charging you $80 but now only half price, etc. Does anyone get actual "stuff" from groupon deals, like walk away with a physical object?
Back in September, I used a groupon to get a ham calzone that usually cost me $8 without a drink for $6 with drink included. They refused to clip my free lunch, frequent customer card, however. I still came out ahead, though I wouldn't have if I had maxed out the salad bar with my free lunch. But I didn't. With my CNBC hat on, I'd say this translates into approximately $100 of market capitalization - per American citizen.
Hey, Google... (Score:5, Funny)
Can we just go ahead and take that 6 billion you offered earlier and call it squaresies?
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(Now if you want companies that totally destroyed shareholder value over time, though, you should look at Proxim Wireless [yahoo.com].)
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I really think Groupon is destroying value at an epic rate. They get retailers to offer their goods at ridiculous discounts. The retailers only get to keep part of the ridiculously discounted price, so they lose money on the deal in the hopes of attracting customers. The customers they attract may be the fickle kind who chase the deal of the day and will come back only if you offer it again, or people like me, who will use a groupon for a cheap deal on a place I patronize anyway. I'd love to see some ha
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It depends on what the deal is. Two of the local deals that are currently running for my area is over half off on an acupuncture session at a chiropractor, and tickets for a local theatrical performance. Either deal has more or less fixed costs that are associated with the deal. If the doctor doesn't
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The deal would have never gone through.
Completing a business deal of that magnitude requires going over the books with a fine-toothed comb on the part of the company doing the buying. Groupon's books would not have passed the litmus test, as you're seeing now that they've managed to go public.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stocks 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
In a sane world, Share price is a function of revenues. Cash flow and profitability should determine stock price.
There, I fixed that for you.
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I know that it is trendy to be snarky on Slashdot, but the OP is correct. It may not be a perfect correlation and there may be certain bubbles that pop up, but overall, stock price is most definitely a function of revenue and expectations of future revenue.
If you are not being snarky, then you should be a millionaire by now with your ability to see these inefficiencies and taking advantage of them.
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Now, if they want to make money off their stock, then they're almost certainly going to care about revenues, margin, and profit (especially the profit, though quarter-to-quarter the individual numbers there are easier to fudge than revenues).
But there's always room a human being to buy a share of a company and its revenues and profits at much more than the going rate
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Actually, GP is actually correct and you are theoretically correct...eventually. Well, no, not even that. Stock prices are theoretically the discounted value of all future income flows you expect from owning it. If you expect to hold them forever, that's just dividends out until discounting makes it irrelevant, or liquidation if the company doesn't last that long. Revenue ignores expenses, and is the wrong measure entirely. Otherwise it's mostly just the discounted value of whatever you can sell it for
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In a sane world, Share price is a function of revenues. Cash flow and profitability should determine stock price.
There, I fixed that for you.
Absolutely correct.
In the mid 90's I worked for a large well established company (in business for over 90 years). They reported record quarterly profits for 6 consecutive quarters -- and the stock price went down.
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In a sane world, share price is a function of expected future cash flow. Cash flow is a function of profitability, and profitability is a function of (sales) revenue.
Fixed that for you.
The problem is with people, even sane ones, trying to estimate future revenues, the two functions mentioned, and many other factors. Share price is also not any kind of 'average' or 'agreed' price for a stock, it is the the fair valuation at which the last buyer and seller traded. Non shareholders (the vast majority of the world) by definition should value the stock for less than that (or they would have bought the stock). Current shareholders, assuming that they are rational (sane), by d
Re:Stocks 101 (Score:4, Funny)
That's because Microsoft is the only company that actually has an Outlook.
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Did the dot com boom teach us nothing?
That you can get rich if you can get in and out in time.
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The dot com boom taught us that there are entrepreneurs who start companies with the sole goal of cashing out at the IPO.
Alll the Groupon investors had ample notice of what they were buying into.
People must be listening to their brokers . . . too bad.
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Share price is a function of revenues. Cash flow and profitability determine stock price.
This should usually be the case. But aside from the dot-com and social-media bubbles, there are cases where strong growth prospects may justify a share price premium, even with negative cash flows and in the absence of revenues. Valuable intellectual property (ex. patents on the next wonder drug with promising Phase 3 results) and other barriers to entry should make some companies worth more than others, all else being equal. Groupon, of course, has extremely low barriers to entry.
Re:Stocks 101 (Score:5, Interesting)
Share price is a function of revenues. Cash flow and profitability determine stock price.
Companies that do little to generate cash and profits don't deserve a high share price. Did the dot com boom teach us nothing?
Stock price is a function of supply and demand by short term speculators. To some extent its centrally controlled; look at the "constant" demand by 401K retirement purchases for the past few decades, and when those purchases turn into sales due to retirement/death/perma-un(der)employment, look out below... There is some impact by corruption, mostly insider trading, but also industry wide a lot of front running.
Stock value is a mathematical function of net present value of future dividend income, and the worth of the corporate balance sheet divided by the number of shares with corrections for market friction both up and down. Both are obviously centrally controlled; an example is federal interest rates in comparative NPV calcs and federal control of inflation vs the ROI of historical corporate investments; but indirectly there are the effects of regulation purchased by the corporation from lawmakers, and effects from taxation, for example a dollar of dividend income is worth less than a dollar on the balance sheet to a 401K investor due to cap gains vs dividend income tax laws. Management has a slight impact on stock value, but the prevalence in group think and herd behavior means they all pretty much do the same thing, so they're not too important. Corruption has a huge impact on value, most corporate accounting numbers are on the edge of legality, the huge impact of government control of businesses is controlled by comparatively small bribes (both legal and illegal) to govt officials. Corruption is a much bigger problem for stock values than stock prices.
On average, if you buy at a price lower than the value, you come out ahead, and vice versa, just like price vs value of real estate or beanie babies or ham radio gear or anything else. However there is an old saying about the market having the ability to be insane longer than you have the ability to remain solvent, so look out... Also both price and value are almost completely centrally controlled with little impact from "market forces" so they are to some extent a proxy for how much the individual investor / speculator trusts corporate owned politicians.
Not a wiki cut and paste, all my own words except my attempt at recalling the "ability to remain solvent" quote.
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The *overall* average/aggregate stock prices for a particular economy may be affected quite a bit by government policies, but
1) the effect is not so large as you claimed, and
2) your theory does not account for the obvious fact that well managed (and lucky) companies see their share price sky rocket while the badly managed ones go bankrupt (i.e. value goes to near zero).
It's obviously not a wiki cut and paste, because it's just plainly wrong. Just take off your tinfoil hat and look at the reality, instead of
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The *overall* average/aggregate stock prices for a particular economy may be affected quite a bit by government policies, but
1) the effect is not so large as you claimed, and
You must be looking at hyper-short term, like hour to hour, or even medium term like years.
You can't seriously claim that:
Going from a funds rate around 20% in the early 80s to 0% now does not have a large effect?
"Cash for clunkers" had no effect on sales/profit?
The repeal of Glass-Steagall had a not-so-large effect on the banking industry?
OSHA/EPA had no effect on plant profitability?
LOL....
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Heh. This is the last time I'll reply since you seem to have little regard for objective truth and seem so proud of your little conspiracy theory for me to take you seriously, but I'll feed you once more.
You claimed "both price and value are almost completely centrally controlled with little impact from "market forces", and now you're countering with a strawman argument claiming that I said "XXX policy had no effect"? Come on. Nobody's disputing policies have profound effects, but there's a lot more than th
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Why are you so anti-american and anti-capitalism?
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WRONG. I've made lots of money (30% gains in under 2 weeks) on stocks that were operating at a loss. The company had good fundamentals, and was operating at a $10M loss for the quarter--the prior quarter was a $26M loss.
Share price is a function of what people will pay. You buy in low, you ride the price up. The news says something that draws interest, up goes demand, up goes price. You realize this shit is way overvalued. The stock has been climbing and climbing. You look at candlesticks, you see f
Business are getting smarter, too (Score:5, Insightful)
They're starting to realize that Groupon customers don't translate into long-term customers, which makes the value of offering deals on Groupon very low.
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I dunno, so far I've purchased 3 groupons and two of those companies have seen (limited) repeat business from me. Actually a third (fourth) got my business because even though the groupon had hit the limit before I saw it I didn't know they existed until that exact moment.
That's a much, much better batting average than billboards, newspaper ads, etc.
I highly suspect that groupon has a higher (customer) return value than most advertising.
Re:Business are getting smarter, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and its very disrupting to the current clientele. Our yoga studio offered a groupon and what we got was a month or two overcrowded classes, and a bunch of angry regular customers who want to know why they are paying so much more for their classes. She ended up having to extend the offer to everyone for a month to quiet them down.
Plus the GroupOn people were almost universally idiots.
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You have the perfect business for using groupon. Create a couple of new basic intro to yoga and offer them at price X sell them on groupon for the X*50%. If any existing people complain offer explain they are very simple classes to get people interested and if they are interested give them a discount to just those classes or even let them in for free since they are already paying people.
You separate new from existing, you can limit the number of people in classes, you teach just a few simple items that ev
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source?
I can tell you my wife and I have found a few businesses that will get repeat business from us, solely because we found them through groupon.
For instance: car detailing. you drive by a detailer every day, but something just puts you off about them. You find they're offering a groupon for 20 bucks for a 120 detail. you say "hmm..20 bucks, I'll eat 20 bucks to test them." And it turns out they're definately worth 120. Not only do you decide to take your car there every few months, but you start te
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Get your groupon stock now! (Score:5, Funny)
50% off, limited time only!
why do I get the mental image (Score:5, Insightful)
of some 60 year old clueless investors with money to burn but not much web savvy, some 30 year old wall street sharks eager to pump a price and cash in on their cluelessness, and a bunch of 20 year olds rolling their eyes and going to pick up their cheap cupcakes?
because the story can't possibly be "promising tech company not so promising". so nobody learned anything from the dotcom crash 10 years ago? is it 2001 or 2011?
this story arc is completely and utterly predictable. clearly i'm not some wall street genius: i'm certain most people posting on this site saw this whole story arc coming too
so why the bleep is it still happening?!
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The explanation is just about half of the population has less than average intelligence.
Somehow many of those have more than average money, and devices like this IPO are a great way to get it.
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i'm not allowed to fuss over stupidity?
The problem is greed (Score:5, Informative)
Groupon is dumping VC money directly to the founder's pockets [businessinsider.com] and screwing the businesses that participate [techcrunch.com]. That combination will result in failure.
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>Groupon is dumping VC money directly to the founder's pockets. That combination will result in failure.
The founder sounds pretty successful to me.
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It isn't greed alone. It's stupidity in its many forms- and the Dunning–Kruger effect looms larger than life in each VC firm I've ever met (perhaps a dozen? Not a lot, but an unfortunate sampling at best).
VC's seem to attract people who are genuinely affable communicators but poor judges of what they are taking their shareholders into.They are predisposed to be gullible by a variety of factors that include greed, overconfidence, a desire to use a good story as a means to make themselves appear compete
How does this work? (Score:5, Interesting)
How does groupon work?
Company A has a product that normally sells for X. They get a deal with groupon to sell it for Y, such that Y < X.
Groupon take some cut, so the retailer is getting A, such that A<Y<X.
So I call the retailer and go 'hey, let me buy your thing at price B', such that: A<B<Y<X.
The retailer gets more than they would from groupon. I pay less than I would if I'd gone through groupon. Groupon get zilch. I win, the retailer wins. My only issue is how I pitch the price B. But for me, anything below Y is a win for both of us, I just don't know what A is (if I go below that, the retailer is better off with groupon).
Or I've missed something, apart from the fact that if groupon didnt exist I wouldn't have heard about the retailer in the first place...
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It was never an online coupon business. It's been an *investment scam* from Day 1. The people running it have taken many hundreds of millions of dollars of investor money... for themselves. The coupon side of it is just a front, and has lost money every day.
Holy crap... my CAPTCHA is... "tulips"... what a coincidence!
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Company A has a contract with Groupon, they are offering a crazy deal for promotional purposes.
The deal is usually at a loss for them and Groupon provides a couple things to the business:
- a lot of advertisement to people eager to read about deals
- a simple way to explain the deal is for one time only and you can't come back and bargain to get the same deal again: it's a groupon, once the groupon is done you don't expect to have this deal on the table again.
Your idea sets a precedent of bargaining which is
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Or I've missed something, apart from the fact that if groupon didnt exist I wouldn't have heard about the retailer in the first place...
you missed that americans are trained not to barter except in automobile and real estate transactions... where most of them are not good at bartering, can't blame them for lack of experience, I guess.
You've described the "Kohls department store" retail model. A quarter of the store is 75% off all the time. If you happen to be there and see something you could use and its on sale that week, how wonderful for you. If you needed socks today, and they're full price, sucks to be you, hope you enjoy paying $40
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Isn't that called bargaining? I thought barter was direct exchanges without the use of money.
I think Groupon and similar services do more than that: they double as an advertisement agency, since by subscribing to their coupons, the buyer is informed of a lot of products and companies they might not know about.
If you already know and want the product, the seller has a much lower incentive to give you a discount.
Re: (Score:1)
This is evil- and wonderful. A 'craigslist' for subverting Groupon deals...love it. Maybe a Groupon deal aggregator...
Seriously, I have not met *anyone* with a Groupon economic success story- repeat business is simply not what happens. The conversion rates for a single full-price re-sale typically have to be in the 25% to 30% range to *break even* at retail gross margins. That kind of conversion is simply not in the realm of probability for the vast majority most businesses. A lot of small businesses find t
Ooh (Score:2)
People see Groupon companies as a joke (Score:2)
Yoda says.. (Score:1)
Queue Triumph the Insult Comic Dog voice... (Score:2)
AT&T Could Have Told You (Score:1)
I can see the Onion headline now (Score:3)
Up next, Facebook (Score:4, Informative)
Facebook is the next company in trouble. Their Alexa reach peaked six months ago [alexa.com], before Google+ launched. That means Facebook is no longer a growth company, and they have to be valued strictly on profits, less their future potential for decline. They didn't IPO on the way up. Now it's too late for an inflated valuation.
Facebook's real financial figures aren't known. They haven't had to make the reports to the SEC that a public company has to make. Groupon (and AOL before them) inflated their profits by capitalizing and depreciating things they should have expensed. (AOL tried to account for those free AOL disks as capital expenses. That got them in trouble when it was noticed.)
On top of that, social networks have a limited life. AOL was once the leading social network. Remember Geocities? Orkut? Friendster? Yahoo 360? Myspace? Once the downward slide of a social network starts, it doesn't seem to stop.
Social networks also have a fundamental problem with advertising - it's an annoyance. Relevant ads that appear with search results are both useful for users and profitable for advertisers. Ads on social networks, where you go to connect with your friends, just get in the way. Social networks try to compensate for this by adding more and more ads. That killed Myspace, and Facebook seems to be on track to go the same way.
But Facebook has to IPO. They have to pay off the early-stage investors. This isn't going to be pretty.