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LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

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Re: LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

#11

Post by prostoalex »

timdorr wrote: post #10
tomasien wrote: post #5

I know some of Living Social's original investors, and I approached them for an investment in my startup about 8 months ago. Part of our pitch was that daily deals solve and amazingly valuable problem in an inherently not-valuable way, and although our system would take less of a straight line, it would and already WAS solving the problem for a small subset of businesses in a more valuable and vastly more sustainable…

Do you think Daily Deals are a fundamentally flawed concept? I tend to think there's nothing wrong with them other than an over-saturation of the market and a prevailing attitude that says all you need is a sufficiently large mailing list to win. But that's just my outsider's view.

Indeed. If you're a restaurant/spa/bowling alley in need of drumming up some business, the daily deals channel, with all of its issues, will still generate the most qualified leads for the buck. Other channels are newspaper or Yellow Pages ads (probably dead) or a combo of Google/Facebook micro-targeted ads.

Re: LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

#13

Post by kloncks »

timdorr wrote: post #10
tomasien wrote: post #5

I know some of Living Social's original investors, and I approached them for an investment in my startup about 8 months ago. Part of our pitch was that daily deals solve and amazingly valuable problem in an inherently not-valuable way, and although our system would take less of a straight line, it would and already WAS solving the problem for a small subset of businesses in a more valuable and vastly more sustainable…

Do you think Daily Deals are a fundamentally flawed concept? I tend to think there's nothing wrong with them other than an over-saturation of the market and a prevailing attitude that says all you need is a sufficiently large mailing list to win. But that's just my outsider's view.

I think doing something that eats away 90% of a merchant's revenue is not sustainable in the long run and arguably something illogical if you just run it once too.

Re: LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

#14

Post by nazgulnarsil »

timdorr wrote: post #10
tomasien wrote: post #5

I know some of Living Social's original investors, and I approached them for an investment in my startup about 8 months ago. Part of our pitch was that daily deals solve and amazingly valuable problem in an inherently not-valuable way, and although our system would take less of a straight line, it would and already WAS solving the problem for a small subset of businesses in a more valuable and vastly more sustainable…

Do you think Daily Deals are a fundamentally flawed concept? I tend to think there's nothing wrong with them other than an over-saturation of the market and a prevailing attitude that says all you need is a sufficiently large mailing list to win. But that's just my outsider's view.

Daily Deals aren't doomed, it's just that businesses AND the people providing the platforms don't really understand how to take maximum advantage of price discrimination. Larger companies have already figured this stuff out and the way they structure their own deals, sales, and price matching should be looked to a a model.

Re: LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

#15

Post by pshin45 »

I've always felt that companies like Groupon, LivingSocial, and Zynga do way more harm than good.

Early on I was impressed by how well these startups were able to capture mainstream attention and change the way so many people live and behave.

But at the end of the day, what value does Groupon and Zynga actually add to society? I'm of the opinion that most daily deals and social gaming companies bring out our most primitive and animalistic tendencies (addiction and impulsiveness), and are antithetical to human progress.

If this is the beginning of the end of LivingSocial and daily deals then good riddance I say.

Re: LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

#17

Post by azylman »

timdorr wrote: post #10
tomasien wrote: post #5

I know some of Living Social's original investors, and I approached them for an investment in my startup about 8 months ago. Part of our pitch was that daily deals solve and amazingly valuable problem in an inherently not-valuable way, and although our system would take less of a straight line, it would and already WAS solving the problem for a small subset of businesses in a more valuable and vastly more sustainable…

Do you think Daily Deals are a fundamentally flawed concept? I tend to think there's nothing wrong with them other than an over-saturation of the market and a prevailing attitude that says all you need is a sufficiently large mailing list to win. But that's just my outsider's view.

Daily deals like Groupon are fundamentally flawed in certain markets.

The problem is that it rarely generates repeat customers and/or customer loyalty - they tend to generate customers that come once, when they have a coupon, and never come again.

So unless your business is high margin, you're almost guaranteed to lose money from daily deals.

Thus, it's very good for things like paintball and skydiving and very bad for restaurants.

Re: LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

#18

Post by mehrzad »

pshin45 wrote: post #15

I've always felt that companies like Groupon, LivingSocial, and Zynga do way more harm than good. Early on I was impressed by how well these startups were able to capture mainstream attention and change the way so many people live and behave. But at the end of the day, what value does Groupon and Zynga actually add to society? I'm of the opinion that most daily deals and social gaming companies bring out our most pri…

>are antithetical to human progress.

This can be said of many startups, and this fact is causing a reactionary feeling toward the Valley in many tech/neckbeard circles.

Re: LivingSocial: Employees' and Founders' Common Stock Now Worthless

#19

Post by hammock »

tomasien wrote: post #5

I know some of Living Social's original investors, and I approached them for an investment in my startup about 8 months ago. Part of our pitch was that daily deals solve and amazingly valuable problem in an inherently not-valuable way, and although our system would take less of a straight line, it would and already WAS solving the problem for a small subset of businesses in a more valuable and vastly more sustainable…

Off topic- dude, your startup is awesome. Automated bar crawls :) And in my cities first! Are you from Richmond/went to UVa?
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