The market cap dropped from $17.8 billion to $104 million. They also rejected a $6 billion offer from Google (at one moment).
Probably a lot of regret among those who did not cash/sell out, but that is hindsight.
Probably a lot of regret among those who did not cash/sell out, but that is hindsight.
In January 2011, Groupon raised $950 million in its last pre-IPO fundraising round. Yet by the end of March 2011, the company only had $209 million in cash, as All Things D’s Peter Kafka reported. So where did all the money go?
Turns out that even as Groupon was losing money, the company paid out over $800 million to company insiders, including $300 million to Groupon chairman Lefkofsky. Groupon, which turned down a $6 billion offer from Google, would later go public at a valuation of nearly $13 billion. It is now worth less than $3 billion, a 77% decline.
https://business.time.com/2013/03/01/groupon-fires-ceo-andre...
1. You could be beholden to investors who bought in at a higher valuation than the offer.
2. Never-having-to-work-again can only be measured relative to a sustainable lifestyle, so this turns on what kind of lifestyle you want. If you are content to live in a one-bedroom apartment in Topeka you need a lot less money to never-have-to-work-again than if you want a ten acre horse property in the Hamptons and a private jet. To sustain that kind of lifestyle without working takes a hell of a lot of money.
In other words, they didn't see a future where they could fail.
can’t imagine the last one being the case for groupon…
I was at groupon when this happened. My impression was this was more of rumor and wishful thinking.
I don't think there would be any reason to divest it, it has no manufacturing or anything that stands on its own.
I was working for Amazon's bet (AmazonLocal -- https://local.amazon.com/) at the time. It lasted a bit longer, but was also eventually shut down.
I doubt it. What would have been different--because Google?
For an example of another Google property that catered to local businesses, they bought Zagat--and to the disappointment of a lot of foodies--it probably fed into Google restaurant ratings for a while but, at this point, there's not much if anything left.
Fortunately, there have been plenty of other terrible business decisions that eclipse that one including purchasing Twitter for $44 billion.