Groupon has had some tough sledding since its IPO (initial public offering) in 2011. The deal-of-the-day firm has seen it’s stock price drop off and competition has intensified. And CEO Andrew Mason is working hard to right the ship.
In a story on Groupon for Businessweek, Lauren Etter and Douglas MacMillan write that: “Mason co-founded the company in 2008 as a Web site for selling marked-down spa packages and half-off pizza. Just four years later, it’s a 12,500-employee public company that E-mails daily deals — on everything from 43 percent-off Android tablets to discounted beekeeping classes — to 36 million customers in 48 countries. Mason built his empire by persuading retailers and restaurant owners to offer deals, but he’s rethinking what a tech company can offer such businesses, and a good way to understand them is to work at one. ‘I didn’t realize how hard it was to run a small business,’ he says.” Groupon is not a small company anymore!
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Photograph by Saverio Truglia