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A day after Groupon offered $20 off of $40 worth of flowers and gifts from FTD, users are calling the deal a scam.
The coupon, which nearly 3,300 people bought, directed buyers to a special FTD website — FTD.com/groupon — to take advantage of the offer. The problem, users said, was that prices were higher than on the regular website, effectively diminishing the value of the deal. Get the full story »
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
Chicago-based daily deal site Groupon said on Thursday Starbucks Corp Chief Executive Howard Schultz has joined its board of directors and that his venture capital firm has taken a stake in the daily deals website.
Schultz’ firm, Maveron, previously invested in retailers such as zulily, which offers daily deals on clothing geared to mothers and their children, and the lucy activewear chain, which was sold to VF Corp in 2007.
Groupon reportedly got a $6 billion takeover bid from Google in November, which it turned down. Two-year-old Groupon recently completed a $950 million round of financing. Get the full story »
A venture-capital investor in Chicago-based Groupon is placing a bet on another local company.
Chicago-based Abe’s Market , an online marketplace for a wide range of natural products, has closed a $3.4 million round of financing led by Accel Partners, which in late 2009 invested in Groupon. Accel, which has more than $6 billion under management, is joined by existing investor Index Ventures as well as other angel investors.
Abe’s Market works with almost 300 vendors and said it has seen its orders grow by 900 percent over the past six months. Get the full story »
An image from Groupon's Tibet ad. (Groupon)
Groupon Inc. is reworking its television commercials in response to the negative reception they received when they aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl.
Chief Executive Andrew Mason said in a Monday blog post that the company is tweaking the end of the ads to draw attention to the philanthropic causes they were intended to support.
“Ads are traditionally about shameless self promotion, and we’ve always strived to have a more honest and respectful conversation with our customers,” Mason wrote. “We would never have run these ads if we thought they trivialized the causes — even if we didn’t take them as seriously as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so antagonistic?” Get the full story »
From TechCrunch | SharesPost, a marketplace for private stock sales, released a report Thursday stating that Chicago-based daily deal site Groupon is worth about $6 billion (between $5.95 billion and $6.07 billion, to be exact).
Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein went to Chicago to pitch Groupon executives on hiring his bank to underwrite the online coupon company’s initial public offering, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
The report was attributed to a single unnamed source. Get the full story »
Groupon’s executives held a series of meetings with bankers Thursday in Chicago to discuss a potential initial public offering for the coupon website, CNBC’s Kate Kelly reported Thursday evening. Groupon, Kelly said, is serious about an IPO, but the process could take months, possibly into this spring. The offering could be worth $1 billion to $1.5 billion, she said, but the company hasn’t offered any details of the potential size of the deal. Get the full story »
A pair of Northwestern University graduates has launched a Chicago-based online deal company that merges snail mail and the Web.
Bare Deal, founded by Justin Shapiro and Glen Andrianov, launched Wednesday in Chicago and the site lists 12 additional cities where the company plans to expand, including Los Angeles and New York.
Chicago is home to tens of Web companies offering local daily deals, including Groupon, the pioneer of the space. Groupon’s co-founder, Andrew Mason, is also a Northwestern alumnus. Shapiro and Andrianov graduated in 2008. Get the full story »
New York-based startup VillageVines has raised a first round of funding from Hearst Interactive Media, GrandBanks Capital and High Peaks Venture Partners for its exclusive restaurant site. Get the full story »
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason speaking in August 2010 at Groupon's headquarters, 600 W. Chicago Ave. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Daily deal startup Groupon said Monday it has completed a $950 million fund raising round, giving the Chicago-based company fresh capital for expanding globally and providing payouts to some of its employees and earlier investors.
This round of fundraising is Groupon’s largest to date. In late December, the company said it had raised $500 million of the $950 million amount.
The investors in the new round included notable firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Mail.ru Group, a Russian firm formerly known as DST, also participated after having funded Groupon in earlier rounds. Get the full story »
From AdAge | Chicago-based daily deal site Groupon saw three of its online ads banned in the U.K. after the Advertising Standards Authority, an industry-established group there, claimed they were misleading to consumers.
From DealBook | With the news that Groupon’s board has authorized the daily deal site to raise up to $950 million in funding, many investors and analysts are now debating what exactly Groupon is worth. The venture capital data provider VC Experts estimates that the new round of fundraising values Groupon at $6.4 billion, while TechCrunch, citing an unnamed source, pegs it at a more modest $4.75 billion.
What does Chicago have that no other U.S. city has this holiday season? The top two busiest coupon Web sites.
Top ranked was Groupon, the daily deal site, with 10 million unique visitors in November, up 54 percent over the previous month, according to online research firm ComScore Inc. Second was CouponCabin, a coupon-code aggregator, with 8.8 million visitors, a 400 percent increase over October.
Coupon sites, which offer promotional codes and other discounts to consumers, ranked as the top-gaining category of Web sites at the start of the holiday season, ComScore said. A record 44 million Americans visited a coupon site during November, up 40 percent since October. Get the full story »
