Groupon Still Losing Money, CEO Is Fired And Leaks Final Email

New submitter Inzkeeper writes with news that the CEO of Groupon met the axe today: "Groupon CEO Andrew Mason made public an email he sent to Groupon employees. He takes responsibility for the company's downturn, expresses his appreciation for his staff, and wishes them well. 'For those who are concerned about me, please don't be — I love Groupon, and I'm terribly proud of what we've created. I'm OK with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through.'" Despite increased revenues, they are still losing about $81 million each quarter, and Wall Street needs blood.

His problem is that they're too small

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to be big like Amazon to lose money like that.

If Groupon was Battletoads

[drinkypoo]

I nominate this for nerd meme of 2013. If slashdot was battletoads. If the republican national convention was battletoads. If shopping at Wal-Mart was battletoads. And then all those of us who never played it will have to make friends with gamefaqs all over again to understand WTF everyone is talking about.

Funny, but I am reminded of the old joke...

[rmdingler]

I've always hated him, but I'll go to his funeral just to make sure he's really dead.

Re:His problem is that they're too small

[Sponge Bath]

Maybe Amazon should buy Groupon. Think of the synergies and new paradigms in losses!

Battletoads, eh?

[grouchomarxist]

I have a theory of what the CEO was doing instead of fixing up Groupon.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Battletoads?

[OhANameWhatName]

Now own up, who googled Battletoads?

Re:Soooooo

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

.. does this mean that everybody's caught on to their predatory business model?

It's worse than that: Not only is their business model predatory, it has a low first-mover advantage and minimal barriers to entry(and to the degree that the barriers are there, other people are way beyond them).

There is nothing stopping a bevy of more-or-less-exact imitators ('livesocial' and friends); but there is also nothing stopping the people who already issue the consumer's credit card and the small businesses' hosted-payroll service from spinning something ('Bank Amerideals(tm)').

Groupon was doubly screwed: not only are they vultures who are ultimately bad for the people they depend on to offer further offers, they are less efficient and well placed vultures than those who are already well entrenched. Bank of America, or any other major financial institution/credit card issuer, aren't creative enough to know their asses from a hole in the ground; but they are trivially better placed than groupon to skim a few extra percentage points from the transactions they already skim a few percentage points from.

Re:If Groupon was Battletoads

[antifoidulus]

And much like Battletoads Groupon seemed really cool at first, only to get frustratingly difficult very quickly to the point that most people just gave up.

Re: For those who are concerned about me

[paiute]

He got a Groupon for a $1 million severance package for only $500,000.

Re: For those who are concerned about me

[bitt3n]

I have no idea what the CEO is like, but from the first time I saw one of their promotions, I thought this is a really bad concept, and I would not invest a bean in it.

what if we give you 50% off the second bean's worth