Earlier quoted context omitted.
CEO of Redfin: http://www.redfin.com/about/management In his defense, they have been two good articles so far.
In my opinion no they haven't.
Well. Obviously you have a right to your opinion.
Groupon’s Success Disaster
101–110 of 130 posts
Re: Groupon’s Success Disaster
#102Like I keep saying, groupon's longterm value is very, very questionable. The #1 value they are bringing at the moment is convincing shop owners to give a really kickass coupon. That's it! That mailing list of theirs? Sure it's valuable. But send that same mailing list a 15% off coupon typically found in the newspaper and they won't give a crap. And give the same groupon offer in the newspapers and...a lot MORE people…
Watching the evolution of Groupon clones in China has been very fascinating. First, there was an explosion of sites just like Groupon and a market leader (Meituan) pulled ahead. Just as Meituan really started to clean up, all the major social networks (the Chinese Facebooks and Chinese Yelp) tapped their gargantuan userbases and launched their own Groupons, integrated with their sites. They've really clobbered the or…
Yelp's onto it. Got offer a 50% off deal in the mail today.
Re: Groupon’s Success Disaster
#103I see three immediate problems: 1. The merchant didn't think through the consequences of their promotion. They made a deal that was too appealing to an unnecessarily broad swath of potential customers. A commenter on the blog points out that the better approach is to figure out how to bait the hook for a specific type of desirable customer instead of having a fire sale. 2. Groupon didn't look out for their partner me…
Yeah, your #2 really burns me up. Groupon should be the ones to call out point #1 to the business owner. Work with the merchant to design a deal that benefits them.
As a business owner, you need to recognize all the costs of your marketing campaigns. It is not Groupon's fault if you fail to manage your business.
Re: Groupon’s Success Disaster
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, your #2 really burns me up. Groupon should be the ones to call out point #1 to the business owner. Work with the merchant to design a deal that benefits them.
As a business owner, you need to recognize all the costs of your marketing campaigns. It is not Groupon's fault if you fail to manage your business.
Actually there is a fine line. Is it the mortgage broker's fault if a homeowner has to declare bankruptcy due to the broker promising her that dream house and selling her a completely unaffordable loan?
Re: Groupon’s Success Disaster
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a business owner, you need to recognize all the costs of your marketing campaigns. It is not Groupon's fault if you fail to manage your business.
Actually there is a fine line. Is it the mortgage broker's fault if a homeowner has to declare bankruptcy due to the broker promising her that dream house and selling her a completely unaffordable loan?
Actually, I don't see it as the broker's fault, and I think it is a net negative for our society that so many people (especially the people who sign and aren't able to pay) do think it is the broker's fault. If the broker is lying or otherwise being fraudulent, that's a different story.
FWIW, I don't believe this is what the coffee shop owner believes.
Re: Groupon’s Success Disaster
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually there is a fine line. Is it the mortgage broker's fault if a homeowner has to declare bankruptcy due to the broker promising her that dream house and selling her a completely unaffordable loan?
Actually, I don't see it as the broker's fault, and I think it is a net negative for our society that so many people (especially the people who sign and aren't able to pay) do think it is the broker's fault. If the broker is lying or otherwise being fraudulent, that's a different story. FWIW, I don't believe this is what the coffee shop owner believes.
In the Netherlands, law (dis)agrees with you.
Disagrees: Banks are obliged to make a honest effort of preventing that from happening.
Agrees: another way to look at that is that, alongside the mortgage, banks do give financial advice. Part of that is answering the question "can I afford this?". If they ignore that, you could call that "lying or otherwise being fraudulent".
Re: Groupon’s Success Disaster
#107Anyone wonder why Redfin is getting so much coverage on HN recently? They don't seem to be a YC company. I just took a look at their Wikipedia entry and noticed that they received investment from Vulcan, founded by Paul Allen. No wonder they called Bill Gates a hero in their previous blog post. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694538
Because they write interesting articles.
Re: Groupon’s Success Disaster
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the basic economics of giving away too many coupons is definitely the core of the problem, but it looks like Groupon aggravated it somewhat. By taking a high cut and targeting discount-minded (rather than repeat-custom-minded) clientele, the $8000 basically went down the drain, and the business experienced more headaches dealing with testy Grouponers than they would normal clients. Part of this is a learning ex…
> By taking a high cut This is what confuses me. Shouldn't the split have been determined before the contract was signed? I don't understand how they could have made a deal with Groupon, but not worked out who would keep what percentage.
The part that really tuned my brain anti-Groupon in this article was:
Groupon sold consumers a $13 Posie’s credit for $6, and then sought to keep the entire $6.
I mean, that's a 100% cut with the business getting nothing. If that's serious, Groupon look unethical; if it's not, then the coffeeshop is lying (and others have doubted the sincerity of the figures, too, as well as their ability to run a business full stop). Either way my mind is slightly twisted to dislike Groupon now. Subtle!
Re: Groupon’s Success Disaster
#109Re: Groupon’s Success Disaster
#110Who is GlennKelman and why is he/shey only submitting redfin articles and who are redfin and why are the articles deliberately contrarian and who is upvoting them?
Just because he's a CEO and you don't find the articles interesting doesn't mean that he shouldn't be posting them. As it's been said HN is full of entrepreneurs who contribute massively to the site. If you have a problem with that maybe their not the one's who should leave...
Wow. That's really nice kgermino: a not so veiled hint that I should leave this site because I have a dissenting opinion. And like I keep saying, it's not that I don't find the posts interesting or not. It appears that I was operating under the assumption that the submissions in HN are user-generated. Now that HN has gotten popular and can drive a lot of traffic towards a site I think that people should disclose the fact that they are affiliated with the source or not. And for saying that I repeatedly get downmodded. And that (in my opinion) says a lot about the mentality of HN. I was about the 19,000th person to sign up to SlashDot. When I say that I have certain expectations of sites like these I kind of am not talking out of my ass. If you don't mind I think I'll stick around for a while and see does the mentality of HN improve.