Groupon'zi

6 months ago, CNN wrote this:

(1) Why Groupon was smart to spurn Google's $6 billion offer

“But Groupon was actually smart to turn down Google's offer. 

Why? Because Groupon is wildly growing in popularity, and is picking up steam so fast that there is no knowing how much it could be worth in a year -- potentially much more than it is now”. - Dan Frommer, cnn.com

That was about 6 months ago, the tune is different now.

(2) Groupon is Effectively Insolvent 

“They lost $49 million in Q3, $313 million in Q4, and $102 million in Q1, with revenue leaping from $185 million to $396 million to $644 million, so it's incredibly difficult to have any idea what Q2 will look like let alone what the business will look like 6-12 months from now. That being said, the most likely reason why they're going public now is because they desperately need the cash, plain and simple”. - Conor Sen

(3) Groupon S-1 Reveals Business Model Deteriorating in Oldest Markets 

“Deeper analysis... however, shows that despite impressive topline growth Groupon’s business model peaked around Q3 2010 and has been deteriorating ever since”. - David Sinsky, Yipit.com

(4) That Queasy Feeling You Get Reading The Groupon S-1 Doesn't Come From One Thing But From Everything 

“There are many things that feel a bit "off" in Groupon's IPO filing.
But the biggest takeaway from the filing, as our boss Nicholas Carlson put it in our SAIcast yesterday, is that every individual thing on its own is understandable. The problem is that when you add them all together, they paint a picture of a very scary company.” - Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, BusinessInsider.com

(5) Groupon IPO: Pass on this deal 

“Groupon has a great tagline in “the fastest growing company in history,” but don’t underestimate how incredibly risky an investment it still is. There’s a very real chance Groupon will never figure out how to tune the revenue machine enough to produce even a penny of profit. They’re asking the public to value them at an alleged $25 billion (or 1/12th of AAPL, a company that generated $6 billion in real profits last quarter) on a hope, a prayer, a song, and a dance about fantasy metrics.

Buyer beware.” - David Heinemeier Hansson

Others links:

(6) Deja Vu: Groupon’s Bubble 1.0 Approach To Accounting - by Eric Savitz, Forbes.com

(7) On Grouponzi - by MG Siegler

(8) Groupon: Doomed to Fail or Worth a Leap? A Twitter Debate - by Mathew Ingram, Gigaom.com

Should they have sold to Google? time will tell.