The real deal with Groupon • Hacker News Board

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#11

Post by AznHisoka » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 4:20 AM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #9

AznHisoka wrote: post #8

I immediately stopped reading when I saw they were interviewing Mason.. Groupon is a public company, and the CEO/founder of course wants to shine a positive light on things. You can't learn much here.

I didn't downvote but will say the comment is dumb. In fact, we can learn a lot from successful public company CEOs like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Marc Beniof and Andrew Mason.

I didn't say you can't learn much about runnign a company, but the title was 'the real deal with Groupon'. You can't learn the 'real deal' here.

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#12

Post by mmonihan » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 4:29 AM UTC

I mean, he's a likeable guy, but something is rotten in Denmark.

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#13

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 4:40 AM UTC

MengYuanLong wrote: post #10

Gaussian wrote: post #5

This is 60 minutes... where we're only 1 year behind the news! This is like their exposé on high-speed trading that came six months after the Flash Crash. Brilliant. Not that I hate the show. But their tendency to cherry pick well-trodden stories always annoys me.

Indeed. And in addition to that, they don't even dig deeper with the extra time. This expose has all the depth of a pleasant Sunday picnic with Mason.

[deleted]

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#14

Post by fleitz » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 4:41 AM UTC

As a small business owner the interview left several questions unanswered for me. The most important I had was which investment would I lose least on: buying GRPN or running a Groupon?

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#15

Post by leak » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 4:42 AM UTC

I guess my headline wasn't good. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3468848

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#16

Post by teddyknox » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 4:46 AM UTC

The scary part about Groupon's explosive growth is the difficulty of employing 150 people/day without lowering required employee competence.

In the long run I think that the smaller, competing companies with more competent employees are going to win the market on a city by city basis.

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#17

Post by robertp » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 4:56 AM UTC

This probably one of Andrew's best interviews. In my recollection- every piece of press or articles written about him/groupon have been focused on the negative fact driven parts that defines groupon.

I did see glimmer of hope that he is a passionate ceo focused on making his dream of his business become a profitable reality. Right now it is leaning that his dream isn't sustainable but you never know.

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#18

Post by samstave » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 4:57 AM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #14

As a small business owner the interview left several questions unanswered for me. The most important I had was which investment would I lose least on: buying GRPN or running a Groupon?

Seriously, SOMEONE needs to perform this analysis.

Invest 10K into their stock and 10K into their program, compare results after N months (12?)

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#19

Post by sunchild » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 5:16 AM UTC

Gaussian wrote: post #5

This is 60 minutes... where we're only 1 year behind the news! This is like their exposé on high-speed trading that came six months after the Flash Crash. Brilliant. Not that I hate the show. But their tendency to cherry pick well-trodden stories always annoys me.

60 Minutes pretty much follows the same template for every story they do. If you watch it enough, they'll eventually cover something you know about, and reveal their total lack of understanding. They just slavishly go through the motions, hitting all the same notes every week.

Re: The real deal with Groupon

#20

Post by pg_bot » Mon, Jan 16, 2012, 5:17 AM UTC

For those complaining about this being a puff piece about groupon... understand that a media company has little to no incentive to take companies like groupon to task. Sure they may ask one or two mildly tough questions that may address some issues that people have with the company, but if they truly hit hard they would go out of business. No one wants to do an interview where they will be sweating the entire time, and journalists who gain a tough reputation will soon be circling the classifieds. This explains why someone like Larry King can be extremely successful, yet there aren't any hard hitting interviewers out there.