Groupon IPO could be as soon as Monday

This headline is slightly misleading. The "roadshow" precedes the actual IPO by as much as six weeks.

Basically, the bank (or, in this case, banks) who are promoting the IPO take the company's management to meet potential institutional investors (funds who might be interested in taking a big chunk of the IPO).

Given Groupon's track record, I wouldn't expect the roadshow to be particularly smooth. Questions like "Why did you, the other founders and early investors take nearly a billion dollars out of the company?" and "Explain to me how you're going to able to make money when everyone and their mother is entering the daily deals market?" are likely to arise.

(See http://goo.gl/ci9k0 and http://goo.gl/qi8xa for my take on the whole affair.)

I also believe that, in the roadshow, Groupon cannot share any information that's not already in their S-1 filing. Which means that the people Groupon will be pitching to will be getting exactly the same information that we already have.