Groupon Inc in 2011

Groupon in 2011

On December 4, 2010, Groupon rejected a buyout attempt from Google of US$ 6 billion. According CEO Andrew Mason, the future strategic direction of Groupon was doubtful under the new potential owner. Reason enough to reject a record amount buyout offer for a company that was in business for just two years. According its owners, the best is still to come. In the previous 2 years, Groupon managed to become the fastest growing internet company the world has ever seen.

From the Chicago start up in October 2008 to a company valued at US$ 1,35 billion at the last valuation in April 2010 , Groupon surprised both friends and enemies. With a unique and "crystal clear" value proposition in the fast growing group buying market, Groupon managed to manoeuvre itself in a virtuous growth cycle. It is this growth cycle that is the engine for the massive and aggressive expansion strategy Groupon is following since the start up. In a market with low entry barriers, ensuring continuous growth and obtaining investments to create superior technology is the only way to higher these barriers and secure parts of the market.

However, founder and CEO Andrew Mason warns for smugness, "When we look one year ahead in the future, Groupon will be on a steady course of becoming one of the largest internet technology firms of our generation, or it will be nothing more then a great idea from people who were defeated by smarter and harder working people."

Andrew Mason, Founder and CEO

The founder and CEO of Groupon is Andrew Mason. Growing up in Mount Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Mason showed an early eye for creative organizing. At the age of 15, he started a Saturday morning delivery service called Bagel Express. He came to Illinois to attend college on Northwestern University, and after graduating with a degree in music in 2003. He worked in web design for companies started by the Chicago serial entrepreneur Eric Lefkofsky. In January 2006, Andrew joined InnerWorkings as the lead developer of their internal print procurement software. Andrew left InnerWorkings in the fall of 2006 to attend the University Of Chicago Harris School Of Public Policy, where he was granted resources to develop Policy Tree, a policy debate visualization Web application. It all started in 2006 with a problem with Mason's cell phone contract. "I just thought, there has to be a large number of people with these same problems, and if we were united in some way, we could leverage our collective power." These thoughts got him pondering the idea of an Internet-driven network similar to social networking sites like Facebook, but aimed at organizing people to take collective action. After receiving an investment offer of US$ 1 million from Lefkofsky, Andrew left school and started The Point in December 2006.

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