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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

#41

Post by pshin45 »

argonaut wrote: post #38
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…

Please define "good" and "human progress." In my experience these terms are often so nebulous as to be meaningless when applied to companies. EDIT: How can you conclude that I'm wrong if even you haven't defined "good" and "human progress" in your argument?

Point taken, and I'd rather not even attempt to define the two because I think that is outside the scope of HN altogether.

I'm pretty new around here and the last thing I want to do is be starting political/moral/religious flame wars in a post about LivingSocial.

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

#42

Post by notJim »

rtfeldman wrote: post #8
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…

Whether or not they privately thought you were right, openly betting against one's own companies is rarely a prudent move for any investor.

Is that true? Isn't that basically what hedging is?

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

#44

Post by argonaut »

pshin45 wrote: post #41
argonaut wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please define "good" and "human progress." In my experience these terms are often so nebulous as to be meaningless when applied to companies. EDIT: How can you conclude that I'm wrong if even you haven't defined "good" and "human progress" in your argument?

Point taken, and I'd rather not even attempt to define the two because I think that is outside the scope of HN altogether. I'm pretty new around here and the last thing I want to do is be starting political/moral/religious flame wars in a post about LivingSocial.

Uhh... starting philosophical tangents is common and encouraged on Hacker News.

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

#45

Post by the_watcher »

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 a fundamentally flawed concept. We use them at my company and they are a great channel for us. They just need to be managed correctly.

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

#46

Post by irollboozers »

pshin45 wrote: post #41
argonaut wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please define "good" and "human progress." In my experience these terms are often so nebulous as to be meaningless when applied to companies. EDIT: How can you conclude that I'm wrong if even you haven't defined "good" and "human progress" in your argument?

Point taken, and I'd rather not even attempt to define the two because I think that is outside the scope of HN altogether. I'm pretty new around here and the last thing I want to do is be starting political/moral/religious flame wars in a post about LivingSocial.

I disagree, it is will within the scope of HN especially if we're to prevent this sort of thing happening again from a founder/person on the ground level.

The other guy is wrong, good and human progress can be paired well with technology and business solutions. It's called social venture, and it's possible. It's just not what the valley focuses on.

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

#47

Post by pbreit »

I can't see Living Social surviving if it really is short that much money owed to merchants. Why on earth would any new merchants join at this point knowing that Living Social is reasonably unlikely to be able to pay them?

I'm a bit surprised the company is so nonchalant about running that far behind on merchant payables. An easy argument could be made that it should not have dipped in to merchant funds at all and all that cash should have been "restricted".

Also, the cheap shot on Groupon is pretty lame considering that Groupon has something like 2x the cash on had as it owes merchants (if I'm reading Sep '12 Balance Sheet correctly).

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

#49

Post by kschrader »

taf2 wrote: post #26

This is absolutely terrible news. I don't care if you "like the daily deals business model" or "hate the daily deals business model" - this is very very bad news for a lot of people. It will have impact on the rest of the industry and perhaps already has. We should be very disappointed that things have gone south in this way. We should work harder to build profit into our businesses and we should hope still that Livi…

Some of us do work hard to build profitable businesses. I don't think that one bad investment deal is going to make a big difference.

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

#50

Post by tomasien »

jrosenblatt wrote: post #32
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…

What was your old startup 8 months ago?

http://thecityswig.com/, but you emailed me so I'm assuming you figured that out!
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