[$25 BILLION!] Groupon - Anyone ready to buy in to the next dot com crash!

If you're handling an IPO and your fees are directly related to the size of the offering, why would you value it it at $6 billion if you could fleece people out of $25 billion?

Don't leave money on the table!!


Martin

Oh god, I so don't wanna get started on this one.

Okay here's a little something:

Just because something is old doesn't mean it's worthless. The wright brothers created the first airplane in the early 1900s, that doesn't mean airplanes are worthless.

Weight loss niche is also old as hell. Here's a weight loss article from the 1930s: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...ght+loss&hl=en

EDIT: I also found another article from 1928: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...ght+loss&hl=en

Now, would be fair to call every single weight loss program out there old and rehashed.

Ideas, technology, anything can always be improved and done over again. Nothing wrong with that and that doesn't devalue it.

Also that reminds of of the fact that Math is Rehashed

Also, according to wikipedia:

Can I ask you how much warrior forum is worth?

It's most certainly a rehashed idea

You guys, think it through: Groupon's business model is the most elegant and simple profit machine I have ever seen.

They convince merchants to provide a discount on their services in exchange for 24 hours of exposure on Groupon's website. That's it. That is ALL they do.

What does Groupon get for this? 50% of the volume for all the deals sold that day. And the "tipping point" concept is amazing as well. They KNOW that it's impossible for them to sell less than 100 deals (or whatever the tip is), so they are absolutely assured of making that much, or nothing at all.

My point is this: Groupon gets full access to 50% of the revenue of a business for 24 hours during a buying frenzy. In exchange for this, they do NOTHING except feature the business on their site. That is it.

The guy who thought of this is an absolute genius.

Russ

Groupon by itself doesn't have much worth, but when it's integrated into Google maps, Google places, Google Product Search and all the rest, then that's when the value jumps up.

OK, so we all know Google tried to purchase Groupon in late 2010, Groupon declined this offer and I personally believe it was probably as a result of the current investors not wanting Google to take over another massive brand and add this in to the network of Google owned companies.

In terms of Groupon being a 2 year old company, that is true and not true at the same time. The original company which was set up in Chicago 2008 was trading as and created as Groupon. However when they decided to expand internationally, they merged or acquired MyCityDeal, a European company who were operating in the same way. Therefore, Groupon Europe actually became MyCityDeal trading under the Groupon brand.

This was also the case in Japan, Groupon purchased a company in Japan and added the Groupon brand but traded as the original company.

Now, Groupon Europe (MyCityDeal) has been around for 1 year, Japan approximately 9 months and since then Groupon has moved in to Taiwan, China and many other countries, they are also moving in to South Korea very soon.

In China, Groupon has joint ventured, with the biggest web company in China, Tencent who own the very famous, very large instant messaging service QQ, among many other web companies and platforms. With this move in to China, if all goes well Groupon will be worth a ridiculous amount of, far more than anyone could imagine.

The reason for this is the current growth rate of E-commerce in China along with the population of China, and the current expenditure online in China, to sum it all up Chinese E-commerce even now, is far more profitable than the USA.

For example, on TaoBao, China's largest E-commerce store, they sell oer 52,000 items every MINUTE. That's one website....

Anyways, the valuation of Groupon cannot be accurate, it's merely what a company would pay for it. It totally depends on what you find to be the most important assets, if it's subscribers then Groupon isn't worth $25+ billion, merely because you can purchase subscribers much cheaper through CPA, such as Groupon has been doing the past 2 years.

In terms of people saying Google, and Facebook should do the same, well they are doing.

Facebook has integrated Facebook deals within their Facebook places and this is still being tested but apparently is live.

Google have been planning on creating Google Offers, which I assume would be integrated in to Google Maps and all of Google's other location based software.

TIP: Want to make lots of money, start looking in to location based marketing, geo-advertising, whatever you want to call it...

Not only are Google and Facebook doing the same thing, but Bing are doing their own deals...New York Times do their own deals and there are of course, other companies who compete directly with Groupon such as Living Social.

Living Social are Groupon's main rival, with an investment from Amazon of $11 million, they are still very small in comparison.

Another competitor is KGB deals, very very small competitor but for some reason have a good marketing budget and currently pay more per lead and CPA than Groupon does.

I will leave this here for now but if anyone has any questions let me know.

I work as the Online Marketing Executive at Groupon UK and would be happy in answering any questions.

Also, if anyone is interested in affiliating with Groupon let me know

This is great example of best internet marketing

Google and Facebook have already tried to replicate Groupon's success and have not. Google has been putting coupons for local businesses out since at least last August (that's when I first got one, I imagine they launched well before I got one though) and are now launching a more fleshed out program but it still is kind of under the radar. Facebook has Facebook Deals which really is more of Foursquare rip off than a Groupon replica, but the point is, it still hasn't gotten as popular as one would expect. Living Social has encroached on Groupon's space more than Google or Facebook at this point.

Just an fyi - all my NON marketing friends all have signed up and blab about it all the time. Stuff sells out around here in droves. Whatever the business model - it's working. Especially in a bad economy when savings are imperative.

I don't think that anyone would actually buy it for that much because you can't really go up from here in my opinion.

Thanks for the thread reading....Interesting reading for sure... Not bad for the fastest growing company in Web history (according to Forbes)

Definitely worth watching more how a 2-year-old online start-up deal-of-the-day website boldly turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google.

Do you think this is their business model: selling discount vouchers to restaurants, services, big-box retailers, etc., at a major markdown--reportedly up to 90% off a retailer's full prices--and then making the retailer pay back a big chunk of the voucher revenues back them.

To fool investors obviously. Goldman Sachs did this with Facebook. Inflating value = more investors.