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Groupon Plunges as Board Members Reportedly Leaving

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Re: Groupon Plunges as Board Members Reportedly Leaving

#71

Post by sidman »

joering2 wrote: post #43
chrisacky wrote: post #31

Big fat I told you so (to anyone on HN I've predicted this to in the past)... Board Member/Director leaves... and what this signals: [1] Employees Confused. [2] Investors are going to really pissed off. [3] Stock is most likely going to continue to fall. (The signalling from this step down is huge). [4] It hints at possibility that the directors have had something to hide; something has been discovered; they have bee…

anyone would want to invent a time machine for a cool $5 billion dollars?? because that much Andrew Mason would pay you to get back to the table split seconds before he said "no" to Google's "we will pay you $6 billions for your website".

Is it possible that the dodgy side of groupon was seen earlier and predicted earlier by the google MnA team and it wasn't Andrew Mason that said "No" ?

Im sure if nothing has changed since the early days of groupon till now, the skeletons now are still the same as before, google was just smart about it, did the math and said no way and allowed Andrew to walk away and speak about the deal however he wished.

On another note, if groupon collapses is it a good thing for the daily deals market ie, more smaller ones take their place, better competition better monetization strategy or does it spell the end for this market ?

What do people think ?

Re: Groupon Plunges as Board Members Reportedly Leaving

#72

Post by sidman »

carbocation wrote: post #69
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Right now, with the bad news already coming out, the harm is increasingly priced into the stock price. The time to short was when they IPO'd and half of everyone saw this coming. Normally I have a rule of "never short". Wish I'd broken it this time :-(.

It's always been virtually impossible to borrow the stock in order to short it; the float is small and the cost of borrow is extremely high.

Yeh, i was looking/playing the puts and it was traded very thinly as well, took ages to get bites so didn't try again after i did it once.

Re: Groupon Plunges as Board Members Reportedly Leaving

#73

Post by Retric »

hdctambien wrote: post #58
corin_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question, and I think the answer has to be subjective. My attempt at an answer: companies that either do things that couldn't be done before they were online because of the nature of the product/service, or where it couldn't be done before because the code has is complex. So pets.com, really they were doing what shops had been doing for years, they just happened to do it online. Reddit on the other hand, there's…

I think by this definition Groupon is a tech company.

I had a door to door salesmen sell me a papa johns coupon book about 5 years ago. It cost 20$ and it probably saved me 10 times that over the next year. Honestly, I have trouble seeing Groupon as anything other that 'that' + email.

PS: I think people have been doing the same thing from at least the 1950's if not earlier.

Re: Groupon Plunges as Board Members Reportedly Leaving

#74

Post by jgw »

wickedchicken wrote: post #53
Mizza wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how many YC companies are "tech companies" by today's definition, then?

Quick question: has YC funded any fabless semiconductor shops? (this isn't snark, I legitimately don't know). That has always been my representative sample of 'a real tech company.' I may be biased though, since I was brought up as an EE :).

I'd be curious to know that, too.

I'd be very surprised, as the capital outlay to start even a small ASIC team is not small. A single simulator license costs considerably more than what the fine folks at YC invest in the companies they have under their wing.

(I don't think it needs to be that way, BTW).

Re: Groupon Plunges as Board Members Reportedly Leaving

#75

Post by westicle »

jacquesm wrote: post #65
OzzyB wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very unnerving if it's true, because, by going along with "Groupon is worth $6bn because Google offered that to us and we turned it down" , implies Google had a hand in creating that extremely high perception before their IPO. If Google did infact have the chance to look at the books (which I'm sure they did), and then allow that "$6bn meme" to circulate -- well, that's evil isn't it?

Just three letters for you: NDA. To expand on that a bit: If google had made public what they thought they found they would have been very much open to a lawsuit with some significant chance of success. Breaking an NDA in such a situation is unheard of, every investor is supposed to make up their own mind and do their own homework before they decide to invest or not. Any legitimate concerns about this would revolve a…

Although nothing preventing Google from releasing a statement saying they decided not to buy Groupon.

If the story is true, it seems very strange that they wouldn't set the record straight (obviously without breaching any confidences or disclosing anything specific about Groupon).

Re: Groupon Plunges as Board Members Reportedly Leaving

#77

Post by samstave »

AlexMuir wrote: post #10

When a director with a lot to lose (Howard Schultz) leaves so suddenly, one can guarantee that there's something coming which significantly threatens his position outside Groupon and/or reputation. So much so, that he is willing to piss off investors, employees and co-directors by upping and leaving. I suspect that the writing is on the wall for Groupon. I'm going to predict that it won't see 2013 without serious res…

Yahoo will buy them ;)

Re: Groupon Plunges as Board Members Reportedly Leaving

#78

Post by samstave »

cube13 wrote: post #26
calpaterson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pets.com was not ostensibly a tech company either. Their business model was also criticised. There was much collateral damage from their decline.

By that definition, Amazon wasn't a tech company, either. Remember that it started purely as an online bookstore.

But online sales is made much more for books than pet supplies. The library of pet supplies is nothing compared to the vast variety of books. So selling books online with a good search and novel distribution model is what set Amazon apart from pets.com

Re: Groupon Plunges as Board Members Reportedly Leaving

#80

Post by gojomo »

tomrod wrote: post #57
chrisacky wrote: post #31

Big fat I told you so (to anyone on HN I've predicted this to in the past)... Board Member/Director leaves... and what this signals: [1] Employees Confused. [2] Investors are going to really pissed off. [3] Stock is most likely going to continue to fall. (The signalling from this step down is huge). [4] It hints at possibility that the directors have had something to hide; something has been discovered; they have bee…

Time to short the stock?

It's already beaten down, but I expect more nastiness for the price when they announce their quarterly fiasco^H^H^H^H^H^Hresults and the IPO lockups expire, both within a few weeks mid-May to early-June.

Remember, stocks can go to zero!

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