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Comment by nraynaud | Hacker News Reader

I came to bash him, he should not be flung as an example for young people. His behavior was toxic. That he would get a second chance in a lowly job under tight supervision, and showing good behavior for a few years, yes. But here it's putting someone who cheated accounting to mis-represent the value of his company to investors directly advising decision-makers. He also let his sales people lie to customer businesses.

It's not even about what he does or says anymore (for a while, time will pass), it's about flinging a guy who struck it rich by cheating in front of aspiring entrepreneurs. He could repeat "don't cheat" as much as he wants, his position is the single proof that cheating works, it's more powerful that words.

here is an explanation of the accounting thing: http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/08/14/memo-to-se...

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Marc Andreessen explained the use of those metrics on Rap Genius:

“As someone who was in the room as an observer at the Groupon board when the decision to use these metrics was made, I think Groupon was honestly trying to provide additional information that investors would find useful, which mirrored the way management thought about running the business.

However, no good deed goes unpunished, and widespread media paranoia about business metrics still lingering from the 2000 dot com crash combined with other missteps on Groupon’s part combined to make the use of those non-standard metrics highly controversial and ultimately negative for the company.”

Andreessen is full of crap here. Plain and simple. These metrics were more about deception than perception. Mind you these comments came from the same guy who called for an end to "Bullshit Metrics." MA has no credibility.

http://allthingsd.com/20121217/andreessen-and-mixpanel-call-...

It's not plain and simple. The thought, at the time, was that the marketing expenses _can_ be amortized. GAAP doesn't let you do that (there's only certain kinds of marketing expenses you can amortize). Groupon's view was that the marketing expenses were a dial they could dial down at any time to reduce total amount of customer acquisition and they would still have residual customer capture. Groupon was, perhaps stupidly, trying to give potential investors more information. Aaron swartz had a post about it as well: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/acsoi

They could have added them on the side. But they where trying to tap public markets and avoid revealing the operating costs at the same time. Going to Wall Street is optional, but going there is a huge commitment and those bankers act in a very predictable manner.

I have to agree. It's not that he 'failed' in many respects he was wildly successful.

You can do a whole lot of things right but if their is something rotten at the core that undermines everything.

Groupon was rotten. The accounting was shady [1], in my view inexcusable so. I profited handsomely from shorting it, they sold the market what can only be described as a lie. The smoking guns were lying all over the place. Maybe if you tell yourself something loud enough often enough you can come to believe it, that doesn't make it true / right.

[1] http://blogs.smeal.psu.edu/grumpyoldaccountants/archives/742

I've known Andrew for years, and I know he's a good guy. If you spent an hour talking to him, you'd be mortified to have said what you just said.

> I know he's a good guy

That's not an argument. That's what his father would say, or his grandmother.

PS1: What does "good guy" even mean? Most people are "good guys" in that they don't spend their weekends torturing small animals in their attic. Most bad things are done by "good guys" because there isn't enough bad guys to do all the evil that's being done.

PS2: Like many others, I did enjoy / admire his exit letter; but I still have a problem not just with accounting practices at Groupon, but the essence of what Groupon was trying to do.

His father would have a bias that I don't.

We form an opinion on people in the first 10 seconds we meet them; this opinion rarely ever changes.

There was a study where students were asked to rate their professor right while the professor was entering the classroom for the first time, and then at the end of the semester. Opinions from students hardly changed at all after a semester of class.

It's very difficult for you to know if you're biased. It's impossible for me to know you're not.

It's also been shown that we like to be consistent with what we've already said, so perhaps unstated opinions are more subject to change than stated ones.

I think it was Dale Carnegie that pointed out if you asked everyone if they themselves were dishonest, you would discover the surprising result that in fact there never has been a dishonest homo sapien in the history of this planet.

I thought his very sincere Groupon exit memo[1] is what made me think he is a good guy. I've never met him, so my opinion is based solely on what I read here. However, the backlash against Andrew is akin to Jason Calacanis's battle with DHH [2] and Jason Cohen's "King vs Rich"[3]. No one here is "right" but I suspect many more people in this community are far more motivated to want to become kings than be rich, hence the backlash.

[1] - http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/one-thing-could-save...

[2] - http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2219-jason-calacanis-vs-david...

[3] - http://blog.asmartbear.com/rich-vs-king-sold-company.html

I am naively optimistic that the positive parts of his character and experience can be gleaned from the whole, even if the whole was rotten over all.

Nobody wants to build the next Groupon, where you are disgraced and forced out of your company after watching a huge portion of your net worth evaporate. They want to build the next Facebook or Google. He had a chance to do that, and fucked it up. Having him explain to you how and why would be extremely valuable. I'd argue even more valuable then getting advice from people who've only known success on how they were so successful.

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