Very interesting article. Warning: very long.
"It's August 2011, and Andrew Mason is agitated.
He's at his desk in the middle of Groupon's wide open, call center-style office in Chicago. His headphones are on. His brow is furrowed.
His company had been the darling of the business press for the past two years. Suddenly it's not.
He can't hang on to a COO. The SEC is asking questions. Industry executives are calling him a ponzi schemer. Early employees are demanding six-figure pay for 9 to 5 hours. One even filed a lawsuit. Merchant customers are screaming. And Mason and his board, having helped themselves to $900 million of cash that could have gone to the company, are are now being blasted for incompetence and greed.
What a turnabout from a few months earlier, when Groupon was the talk of Wall Street. Then, Groupon was one of the fastest-growing companies in history, spurning $6 billion takeout offers from Google, preparing to go public at a valuation fo $25+ billion. And now everyone was talking about it running out of cash!
So what happened? How did things go so wrong?
And now that Groupon is finally going public, how will the Groupon story end?
This story, as told to us by insiders, answers some of these questions. Our sources all asked to remain anonymous, either in deference to the SEC's "quiet period" rules for companies that plan to go public or in order to remain in compliance with severance agreements with Groupon. Groupon itself declined to comment."
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