Groupon Giant loses founder and CEO Mason or will leave business

The debate continues as the originator of Groupon's desire to go public.　　On June 9, Kevin Kelleher, a leading US investment analyst, wrote in the wealth net that there are indications that the company's founder, chief executive Mason Andrew Mason, is likely to leave Kevin Kellershire.　　The Kellershire part quotes a letter from Mason's June 1 issue of "potential shareholder letters to the Future", which is based on an analysis of the real issues that Groupon faces today. In the context of a total debt of $534 million trillion, he points out, Groupon, eager to make an IPO, is unlikely to worry investors and thus its investment confidence.　　In addition, in January this year, 85% of the nearly 1 billion dollars Groupon will be able to buy back the shares of senior executives such as Mason, once the IPO is successful, investors without voting rights are bound to be in a passive position and face unnecessary risks. In the prospectus, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, the underwriters, have disclosed the situation in small print, but have not made any warning suggestions to investors.　　Kellershire believes that investment banks are apparently treating investors as guinea pigs to see how much room is available for bubble-type investment. Kellershire also said the most fatal problem with Mason's open letter was the apparent contradiction between its wording and Groupon's prospectus.　　Unlike the prospectus's hint of concern about money, Mason speaks of "our great concern for customers and businesses", and that is the most representative statement. Again, it was Mason's blind arrogance and excessive optimism that made him suspicious. For Groupon's huge losses, Mason attributed it to "boosting growth through investment". Kellershire pointed out that in order to maintain industry-leading and large expansion, the result of a lot of burning money, the return on investment is falling, resulting in the company's growth rate far beyond the fund to support the scope.　　This approach is not common in startups and is fraught with risk, Kellershire said. Under normal circumstances, only the cost of expenditure brings revenue growth, and that is effective.　　At present, Groupon's losses are equivalent to 18% of its operating income, and its desire to raise $30 billion trillion of "lion" has raised questions about its listing intentions, even as a looming Ponzi scheme. Kellershire Mason's claim as "naïve", believing that Mason's letter had a "disturbing, mournful tone". In fact, Mason's open letter does not make people feel his spirit and confidence, the only label is "stick to the difference", but Mason did not do more explanation.　　Such frustrated goals seem to suggest that, under the pressure of Groupon, Mason has become aware of the danger and is eager to step back and pursue a "more meaningful career", Kellershire analysis said. At the end of the article, Kellershire again warned investors. "If a CEO hints in the prospectus that he wants to get out, shareholders should recognizeI wonder if it's time for this. "[Page] attached:" A letter from Mason's potential shareholder letter to the future dear potential shareholder: On the day of writing this, Groupon's more than 7,000 employees offered more than 1000 deals to 83 million users in 43 countries, The total number of deals offered so far has exceeded 70 million.　　Reaching this size in about 30 months requires a lot of operational flexibility, which can be traced back to the day Groupon was founded. Before Groupon, I created a website called "The Point" in November 2007, when my former employer, one of Groupon co-founder Eric Levkovsky, Lefkofsky me out of school so we could start a company together.　　The point is a social platform that allows any user to organize an activity that requires other users to pay money or act as a group, but only when the number of users who agree to participate reaches a "threshold". I started the point to make the little people more powerful to solve the problems in the world that can't be solved. A year later, I started Groupon to get Lefkofsky to stop bothering me about finding a business model. Groupon was launched as a secondary project in November 2008, using the point's group buying technology.　　By January 2009, its human tolerance had soared, and we had turned our attention to Groupon. I'm writing this letter to let people know how we operate Groupon.　　While we are looking forward to becoming a public company, we are still planning to continue to operate on the basis of long-standing principles that have helped us to get there today, including:-We are sparing no effort to invest in growth areas. We spend a lot of money to get new users because we can measure the rewards and believe in the long-term value of the market we are creating. In the past, we've been investing in growth, which has made healthy quarterly profits a pretty big loss.　　When we find opportunities to invest in long-term growth, we will seek to seize these opportunities without ignoring certain short-term consequences.　　-We've been investing in ourselves. In the early days, Groupon had only one deal a day on each market.　　This model is based on our limitations at the time when we had only a small user and merchant community. As we grow up, we are confronted with the opposite problem. The bulk of the demand from businesses – some in the waiting list in some markets – has been lined up for 9 months-leading to unmet demand, one reason for the emergence of hundreds of Groupon sites around the world. At the same time, our user base has grown so large thatMany businesses face a whole new problem, which is that customers are too much, not too little. In order to adapt to this situation, we have improved our investment in technology and introduced the trading positioning function, which gives us the ability to offer different transactions to different user groups in the same market based on the individual interests of the users.　　In addition to providing a more relevant user experience, the move has helped us manage user flows and open up the Groupon market to more businesses, which has weakened the reason for the existence of cloned group-buying sites. Today, we are introducing innovative models that cannot be used without large numbers of users and businesses.　　Groupon now, for example, allows users to pick deals that can be consumed immediately based on demand, while also helping to show a thriving landscape throughout the day. We will make an ambitious bet on our future, which may distract us from our current business.　　We'll make some right bets and maybe make some wrong bets, but I think this is the only way to keep creating destructive products.　　-We're different, and we like it. We hope that the time people spend on Groupon is memorable. Life is so short it's not worth wasting time on an annoying company. Whether it's an unusual group buying deal, such as a fire dance course, or a marketing campaign like Grouspawn, we're looking to create a new and ever-changing experience for our users.　　Our decision making process also takes into account how well we feel for users and businesses, even if the decision cannot be quantified in the short term. We are committed to making Groupon a service that users are willing to use. We have begun to subvert the brand of traditional discount services and believe that nothing is more important to our long-term success than the satisfaction of users and businesses. We printed the phone number on the coupon and built up a huge customer service unit. We have developed a complex, multi-stage process to pick deals from high-quality businesses. We built a dedicated business services team to work with our business partners to ensure customer satisfaction. We have a fully publicized return policy that allows users to get a refund at any time they feel dissatisfied.　　We do these things to make users and businesses happy, and we know that market success will be a side effect. We believe that when great companies fail, they are not lost to rivals, but to themselves-a situation that happens when they are no longer focused on making their customers happy. Based on this, we do not plan to respond to competitors.　　We will focus on them, but we will not distract ourselves from making decisions that are not primarily intended to satisfy users and businesses.　　-We don't measure ourselves in the traditional way. We closely track 3 major financial metrics. First, we track the gross profit and think it best represents the price we createValue。 Second, we track free cash flow, and no other indicator reflects long-term financial stability more than it does. Finally, we use a third metric to measure our financial performance, that is, the adjusted overall division operating profit (adjusted consolidated Segment keyboard-based income), That is, excluding new users to obtain costs and some non-cash expenses of the general department operating profit.　　We believe that this indicator reflects the operational profitability of the marketing costs that are not counted for long-term growth. If you're considering investing in Groupon, hopefully that's because you believe that Groupon is more likely than any other company in history to reinvent the local business market. The pace of our growth reflects a huge opportunity that will enable us to create a more efficient localized business market. Like any company in this industry with only 30 months of history, the road to success will be full of twists and turns, glorious moments and other absolutely foolish moments.　　We know that sometimes this will be a bumpy road, so thank you for considering joining us. Mason June 1, 2011