Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Ponzi!!! NO IPO---sinking ship--huge layoffs in china..list goes on
Groupon Is a Straight-Up Ponzi Scheme
I would love to be wrong about this. Especially given the fallout in the tech economy if Groupon blows up. But isn’t it really pretty obvious that Groupon is a massive Ponzi scheme?Let me first say that Groupon filing to go public is not proof of a tech bubble. There is no tech bubble, just a micro bubble here or there. Nor is the Groupon story even particularly interesting or important compared to what’s happening in Europe right now. But since it has filed for IPO and since all of us in the tech economy now must spend the next years hearing the breathless gossip, IPO hysteria, and requisite recriminations over the inevitable implosion — let us briefly examine the tulip mania that is Groupon.
Why is Groupon not merely a tech-bubble datum but a Ponzi scheme? Simple: Groupon has found that you can get local merchants to try anything once if it brings them new customers. A few local merchants in Chicago get them started, and Groupon shows good revenues. In fact, Groupon immediately remits half of those “revenues” back to the local merchant — they were never Groupon revenues in any meaningful sense of the word. But, optically, Groupon revenues look high — which they use to raise a financing round at a high valuation. Then they use the proceeds to hire vast armies of salespeople to dig deeper into Chicago’s local merchant community and repeat the trick in other cities.
Meanwhile, many early-adopting merchants find that the burst in customers immediately disappears, and since they can’t perpetually discount 75%, those merchants stop using Groupon. But Groupon’s sales force adds many more new merchants than it loses (for now). And Groupon goes out and raises another round at an even higher valuation; they hire even more salespeople and expand into even more virgin territory. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The model is only sustainable if it pays off for local merchants — and to justify Groupon’s current size, it now must pay off for local merchants ubiquitously and flamboyantly. If not, Groupon is mostly a Ponzi scheme.
Groupon argues that it helps merchants attract new customers who become loyal patrons, and that pays for the expense of winning them via Groupon. This is the fundamental argument Groupon’s sales force uses to close local merchants. Let’s get past the sales speak to what this really means. The typical Groupon “deal” is 50 percent off retail, with half of the proceeds going to Groupon. So the merchant gets 25 percent of the revenue s/he would have received if the same number of customers had arrived via walk-in traffic. Except that all that Groupon revenue is unprofitable — so more and more Groupon revenue is actually bad.
The vast majority of local merchants can’t discount more than 10 percent. Some can go maybe 25 percent in special situations. But 75 percent is a wholly unsustainable number. If all local merchants begin using Groupon then it can’t send loyal customers to anyone; Groupon can only send discount chasers to merchants. Which means that as Groupon grows, both local merchants and their competitors will find that Groupon’s main argument no longer works (if it ever did) — Groupon simply can’t send them loyal new business. So they all stop using Groupon in its current form.
Perhaps Groupon management thinks it is creating a sustainable Prisoner’s Dilemma, one that ultimately destroys value for the local merchant ecosystem but benefits Groupon. In other words, Groupon could grow so big that local merchants have to use it, even though it ultimately hurts them. In game theory terms, Groupon creates an equilibrium point at “All Local Merchants Defect,” and then, having forced merchants into this value-destroying equilibrium, takes a cut for having rigged the game. Obviously, Groupon couldn’t share this thinking publicly. They would just continue to use the attract-loyal-new-customers argument even though it no longer makes any sense for a ginormous Groupon.
This may sound cynical. But if this is Groupon’s game plan, it isn’t cynical. It’s naïve. Most local merchants simply don’t have enough value in their collective ecosystem to share anything remotely like this much value with Groupon. This isn’t a stable equilibrium, it’s a suicidal one. The local merchants will have to stop using Groupon en masse not long after they first start experimenting with it.
Due to its size, Wal-Mart can squeeze its suppliers on price and its suppliers will comply. Lower prices create value for Wal-Mart’s customers. But it’s sustainable only because it also creates value for Wal-Mart’s suppliers who are large enough that they can find efficiencies in their manufacturing processes (generally by outsourcing manufacturing to low-wage economies like China). That’s bad for American workers. But it’s value-creating for Wal-Mart suppliers because they get to sell stuff through Wal-Mart (which means they can sell more of it) at margins that are acceptable due to reduced manufacturing costs.
But most Groupon local merchants are nothing whatsoever like Wal-Mart’s suppliers. They generally have no margin to spare or wiggle room in their operating costs. Therefore, they cannot continue using Groupon.
Let’s consider the exceptions because there are some. A local merchant with huge gross margins — 70 to 90 percent — can use Groupon sustainably (though it still isn’t clear that they should). Or, a large local merchant who does a lot of expensive customer acquisition (i.e., local television) can use Groupon sustainably but only if Groupon is better than its traditional customer acquisition methods (doing both and doubling customer acquisition costs will not double the local market size).
This is why Groupon must ultimately implode — there just aren’t that many business that fit either of these descriptions.
Groupon’s management publically avers that “local merchants come back” — well, sure, some of them do. For a while. But what do the audited numbers look like? Just what percentage of local merchants come back? How many times? Do local merchants show a strong tendency to decline in participation over time?
Groupon management won’t release these numbers, and certainly won’t release thoroughly audited and vetted versions of these numbers. Instead, what Groupon management is doing is withdrawing an astonishing amount of cash out of the company. It’s also creating a new class of B shares so that it can keep control of the company in the hands of management — all the better to keep the Ponzi scheme going for as long as possible.
Again, there isn’t a bubble in tech. High valuations for many of the big tech companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter make sense due to those companies’ incredible network effects and the fact that, fundamentally, these companies are creating value and will get better over time at monetizing that value. Net-net, Groupon is unsustainably destroying value and will implode sometime in the next five years. When that happens, it will almost certainly, and totally unfairly, wreak havoc throughout the tech ecosystem.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Knew It!!
Subscibers up, more than double. Revenue per market open over a year down, with twice as many deals....hmmmm
No renewals, except the real weak and high margin. More restrictions, stop the insanity.
LETS MAKE GROUPON THE NEXT MYSPACE!!
No renewals, except the real weak and high margin. More restrictions, stop the insanity.
LETS MAKE GROUPON THE NEXT MYSPACE!!
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Who is the next facebook to make groupon the next myspace?
Idea:
Please steal it, free site for merchants to post their own half off deals and get 100% of the money.....Who can build it, how do we grow its email list. ?????????????
Freeoupon.com anyone??????????????
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Require Groupon to show how much retailer recieved on Groupon
This would help people understand that they MUST spend more or they are hurting the business
Confessiones from Ex Groupon Sales Person
Former Groupon Employee Describes High-Pressure Tactics Culture And Merchants "Freaking Out"
Editor’s note:Guest author Rocky Agrawal continues his in-depth TechCrunch series looking at the daily deal industry. Agrawal is an entrepreneur who has worked on local products since 1995. He blogs at reDesign and Tweets @rakeshlobster.
I received a couple of emails from a former Groupon employee which sheds some light on the sales culture at the company. This is one person’s view, but it comes from a former insider. The emails are below, and are fairly balanced and honest. You can judge them for yourself.
This information was provided on condition of anonymity. The employee left voluntarily for a position elsewhere. ”I really don’t have any reason to fabricate anything, i just think its time mom and pop shops know what they’re getting into before getting swept up in the hype, and your series has been great,” the former employee said.
Some of the key points:
- Some sales representatives care about merchants, others view them as a nuisance.
- Some reps only care about commissions and don’t cap the number of deals that can sold. Groupon then has to do this in real time when merchants freak out.
- Sales people (not surprisingly) are encouraged to squeeze as much as they can from a business.
- Last minute changes to deals are common.
- The ex-employee encourages small businesses to really run the numbers themselves.
Groupon sales people are like most sales departments—there are good apples and bad apples, people that really care about the merchants they work with and people that only care about their commission, no matter the cost to the people in the way.From a second email, where I asked specifically about fraud.
One very common phrase is in regards to the merchant “freaking out,” and this happens every single day. What this is almost always in reference to is a merchant who can’t handle the traffic that they end up getting, forcing a live cap of a deal (almost always because it benefits the sales people not to cap it, obviously, and they advise merchants to sell more Groupons than the business is able to handle, mostly by low-balling the estimate of how many will sell). There are also constantly issues with the terms changing, because, as you said, the merchants are sold on the “Who’s Who” pitch, and they agree to terms they should never have agreed to.
In many, many cases, the merchants are spoken of by the sales people as silly, irksome, unstable clients that are just part of the job. Sure, some of them are. But what this really points to is that owners care about their businesses, and sales people care about their bottom line.
I’m not saying Groupon is filled with evil capitalists; it’s not. There are many fantastic people that work there with great talents and great integrity. But, the sales people are encouraged to squeeze as much as they can from the businesses, and it very, very often results in disaster for the businesses themselves. By very often, I mean every single day, there are many businesses that must put on emergency deal caps, change the terms due to volume they can’t handle, etc. My only thought as to why more of these businesses haven’t come forward is that they do not want to get blackballed from running again should they so choose. The waiting list to actually run is gigantic, and it often takes months before a business can actually get a deal to run.
I have often wondered how long it would take before businesses started coming forward about this, and I think your recent articles will encourage that. After all, as heart-wrenching as it sometimes was to see what was happening to small businesses that ran Groupons, it is the job of every business owner to make the best decision for his or her business. Sometimes (increasingly so with all the daily deal options), that means realizing that when something seems to good to be true… well, we all know the rest.
There is also something to be said for the very small amount of mention of the “haves and have nots” within the company itself. As the staff grows, this is a growing problem. I will say that the situation inside the company, in my experience, seemed like a powderkeg in this regard. There were/are a lot of bitter attitudes about the way things are handled internally, because, predictably and understandably, the company is being run by people who have never run anything before, let alone what are now gigantic departments, and this results in a whole lot of frustration and feelings that the work that’s being put in (which is an insane amount of work, as anyone who’s worked for a startup will attest) does not equal the pay being given out. I will say though, this makes more sense seeing the gigantic losses that were previously unknown, even to those within the company.
I really do want more businesses to avoid the potential disaster of running a Groupon. It was a bit tragic watching so many businesses get hosed so enthusiastically.
I’d also like to add that Groupon/daily deal sites really can work for businesses, but they have to be willing to go to bat for themselves and really run the numbers before they decide on terms. If what will actually work financially for them won’t be accepted by Groupon, then they shouldn’t run. Period. Way too many businesses cave on this when they shouldn’t budge whatsoever on what makes financial sense for them.To share your daily deals experience, please email dailydeals@agrawals.org.
Honestly, I never dealt with any issues of fraud personally. I will say that some very questionably businesses made it close to going live, to an alarming extent. A lot of sales people seemingly would run any business that was willing, and the vetting was suspect (if it happened at all), as other employees would find unbelievably bad businesses in the pipeline. For the most part, these kind of places got caught before going live, but… buyer beware. In light of this, fraud/closing soon after running is entirely possible, though Groupon does go to great lengths after sales people sign up businesses to make sure that they’re legit and worth running. The fact-checking department is possibly the strongest and most integral department there, and anything that gets through them is simply because the amount of deals coming through the pipeline everyday outweighs the man power. Seriously, the pace is insane over there. This also leads to another point: The customer service department at Groupon is awesome, that is no lie or marketing ploy. They deal with tons and tons of headaches each and every day on all sides of the deals, and they honestly do their very best to make sure everyone is happy. I do not envy them.
And they get TAX breaks!!!
Groupon Gets $3.5 Million From Illinois For 250 New Jobs
First Posted: 10-20-10 12:40 PM | Updated: 10-20-10 02:42 PM
What's Your Reaction?
Read More: Chicago, Groupon, Groupon Chicago, Illinois, Illinois Budget, Illinois Governor Race, Pat Quinn, Chicago News
It's the fastest growing company in the history of the internet. Its River West headquarters employs over 900 writers and editors. And as of this week, it's the recipient of a $3.5 million investment from the state of Illinois.
Governor Pat Quinn announced that Groupon would be receiving state funds to help the company hire 250 new employees. It had reportedly considered making the hires in their out-of-state offices before the investment package came through, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Groupon, a social shopping site that was started in 2008 with seven employees, now has branches around the world and a workforce in the thousands. It offers subscribers a daily discount to a local business; today, roughly 13 million people get a morning email from the company.
"We want to keep 'em here. It's a competitive environment," Quinn said at the announcement Tuesday, according to Crain's Chicago Business.
The Sun-Times gives the details on the cash:
The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity is administering the $3.5 million investment package, which includes EDGE corporate tax income credits over 10 years based on job creation, and ETIP job training funds to enhance worker skills.But Greg Hinz at Crain's sees the move as potential campaign fodder, in a column entitled "Does Groupon need state aid?" "Chicago's Groupon, one of the web's fastest-growing companies ever, got a $3.5-million aid package today from the state of Illinois, land of the $13-billion budget deficit. Was this really necessary?" he writes.
Why Groupon is terrible... and some advice.
OK...I fell into a trap..took there phone call, at the time is was an honor...Or so I thought. I took there terms, sold thousands, and year and half latter. Well, my business is fine, but will never run a Groupon again.
What deal I got..$40 item, sold for $20. I recieved $10 dollars minus 2.5 credit card fees. That was paid in 3 installments.
If you want to make my mistakes at least.................
DO NOT PAY 50%, there average gross is only 39.7, so only idiots are paying 50%. Livingsocial.com only tries to get 40% and they do not charge customer, which you are, any fees.
But...Let me tell you the truth...
95% of customers are fine, but you will never see them again. They are off for next business dumm enough to offer groupon. They are not your customer, they are groupons. The other 5%, oh you will have fun with them. They want change back, are never happy, change terms, buy more than allowed, use them twice. Yes twice, maybe your business can check them, but I got the same certificate used in 3% of total. So from customers perspective, if they use half off coupon twice, its like getting an added bonus. These 5% will make you stomach curl. They will annoy you, they will never be happy.
If you can afford 25% of your product or service, and give up that other 75% and view it as marketing, go for it. But the truth is you just gave groupon and customer some CHARITY, because you won't see the customer again, and you like me, won't be taking Groupons calls.
What deal I got..$40 item, sold for $20. I recieved $10 dollars minus 2.5 credit card fees. That was paid in 3 installments.
If you want to make my mistakes at least.................
DO NOT PAY 50%, there average gross is only 39.7, so only idiots are paying 50%. Livingsocial.com only tries to get 40% and they do not charge customer, which you are, any fees.
But...Let me tell you the truth...
95% of customers are fine, but you will never see them again. They are off for next business dumm enough to offer groupon. They are not your customer, they are groupons. The other 5%, oh you will have fun with them. They want change back, are never happy, change terms, buy more than allowed, use them twice. Yes twice, maybe your business can check them, but I got the same certificate used in 3% of total. So from customers perspective, if they use half off coupon twice, its like getting an added bonus. These 5% will make you stomach curl. They will annoy you, they will never be happy.
If you can afford 25% of your product or service, and give up that other 75% and view it as marketing, go for it. But the truth is you just gave groupon and customer some CHARITY, because you won't see the customer again, and you like me, won't be taking Groupons calls.
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