no surprise this topic comes from yipit's founder as i think it's pretty ironic that so many of the daily deal startups started as something entirely different.

plenty know about the groupon story, but who remembers when livingsocial was emerging by having people share their top 5 lists on facebook? what about scoutmob which began as a wifi provider?

both of those companies noticed that they were sitting on an large amount of consumer data, and they both figured they could use it to pivot their model towards the emerging group discount space.