In 2010, Groupon founder Andrew Mason turned down Google's $6 billion acquisition offer to stay independent. The company went public at a $13 billion valuation in 2011, but quickly revealed accounting problems and a $420 million loss. Within a decade, Groupon's value collapsed to $500 million.
In 2010, Google offered $6 billion to buy a 2-year-old coupon website. Here's what happened next. Groupon was the hottest startup in America at the time. It had gone from basically a single email that was doing a half-off pizza deal in Chicago to a company that was doing $89 million a month in revenue. At the time, Google wanted to make sure that they owned local advertising and they saw Groupon as a key linchpin to do that. Andrew Mason, the 30-year-old college dropout founder, basically said no to this offer from Google. They wanted to control their own destiny and they did that and they went public in 2011 at a a $13 billion valuation. It was the biggest tech IPO since Google itself went public. But within months, things would fall apart. They'd discover accounting problems. The company would swing to a $420 million loss, and Andrew himself would be fired within 16 months. The IPO hadn't put a bunch of money on the balance sheet for Groupon. The majority of it had gone straight to early investors and Andrew himself. In fact, the earliest, biggest investor took home $398 million. Today, Groupon is a shell of its former self, down 97% in the stock market, barely worth $500 million. A far derived from the $6 billion it was offered by Google over 15 years ago. Often when there's great deals on the table, even though you think things may never go wrong, sometimes a good idea just to take them, take the money, and count the W. If you want to dive more into the story, the rise and fall of Groupon, I did a long-form video. There's a link to it in the comments below.
