This isn’t the most accurate statement about Groupon:
“A lot of people made the mistake of overlooking the price-promotion part of this model” (via Groupon Fights To Survive – Business Insider.)
Lots of people were skeptical about Groupon. I remember reading several articles three years ago and summarizing that “Groupon is no doubt doing well now but I wonder how persistent their success will be.”
Even investors were not completely sure:
“I’m still not absolutely convinced that Groupon will be the kind of success we hope it will be,” he said. Nonetheless, “it was too big an opportunity to pass up.”
So what went on? Well, I’ll point to another post of mine from last year on what investors were buying when they invested in Groupon:
Think of Fred Wilson’s post on AirBNB– “We focused too much on what they were doing at the time and not enough on what they could do, would do, and did do.”
