Andrew Mason, the “unlikely CEO of last year’s unlikeliest breakout business”, brought the “bottom-feeding” Groupon into a “billion-dollar force”. He was studying to get a degree in public policy and had not had much business training. Groupon operates in a similar way to eBay: it is essentially a website featuring discount gift cards/coupons usable at the respective local or national company.
This article shows Mason’s thoughts on how he achieved such a huge success and also his future expectations. The main source of innovation for Mason actually came from his previous area of study, which involved social change. He states that “most of the web businesses that have been truly successful at making the world better” are tools that help “usher in social change”. This was what he wanted for Groupon as well, which gave him the innovation he needed to make this huge success.
However, there are also risks as there is a tendency for anything that rises quickly may crash as quickly. There are also other big competitors who add to this risk.
This diagram shows the speed at which Mason increased revenue. In a year, he managed to get a growth of approximately $78M, from Jan’10 to Jan’11.