Turning $1 million into $4 billion!
 

The man who could make more than $4 billion from the initial public offering of Groupon Inc. is an 41-year-old, unassuming Midwesterner who got his start selling carpets on the street.

Eric Lefkofsky, who seeded Groupon with its first $1 million in 2008, shot to business fame this week when the e-commerce company filed for one of the most hotly-anticipated IPOs of the year. Mr. Lefkofsky was listed as Groupon's largest shareholder, with 21% of the shares--three times as much as Andrew Mason, the CEO and public face of the company.

If Groupon, which offers daily deals on goods and services to consumers in partnership with local merchants, is valued at the expected $20 billion or more, Mr. Lefkofsky's $1 million investment will be worth about $4 billion.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work...on-coupons-wsj

awesome!

Now that's a return! Nice.

real biz!

Wow, thats pretty sweet.

awesome., its real investment., sell it now., and again invest those 4 bil....

NICE:thumbsup:thumbsup

Lucky he didn't give that money to facebook. They would haver diluted his shares in no time.

I seriously don't know how a site like Groupon can make that much money. Anyone explain where their income comes from?

Groupon takes 50%

If a groupon says $5 for $10 of popcorn, Groupon gets $2.50 per sale

Dayum....

I see. thanks

and if there is affiliate, the conditions for him are following:


Program Term: Groupon Standard Affiliate Program Terms (Mar 2011)

1. Action: Existing User
ActionCriteria Online Purchase by an existing user.
Action Referral Period 30 day(s)
Action Referral Occurrences Unlimited
Commission 2.00%
Locking Period - Standard Actions lock on the 10th of the month, unless extended.
Performance Incentive
For Total Sales Amount equal to or greater than $5,000.00 USD increase commission to 3.00% per action.
For Total Sales Amount equal to or greater than $10,000.00 USD increase commission to 4.00% per action.
For Total Sales Amount equal to or greater than $15,000.00 USD increase commission to 5.00% per action.

2. Action: New User
ActionCriteria Online Purchase by a new user.
Action Referral Period 30 day(s)
Action Referral Occurrences Unlimited
Commission 10.00%
Locking Period - Standard Actions lock on the 10th of the month, unless extended.
Performance Incentive
For Total Sales Amount equal to or greater than $1,500.00 USD increase commission to 11.00% per action.
For Total Sales Amount equal to or greater than $3,000.00 USD increase commission to 12.00% per action.
For Total Sales Amount equal to or greater than $4,500.00 USD increase commission to 13.00% per action.
For Total Sales Amount equal to or greater than $6,000.00 USD increase commission to 14.00% per action.
For Total Sales Amount equal to or greater than $7,500.00 USD increase commission to 15.00% per action.


its pitty, they have shitty geo-targeting - you have to pick your links and target them by yourself.geez we are in 2011, even shitty adult dating programs are using more advanced GEO-targetting then this multi-billion company.

I work for a company that is building a website for "Groupon for Restaurants", and they are noticing that the Groupon model is already getting old.

ebay: sell a $100 item for $100+, pay ebay $4. Get $96+ for your $100 item.
Groupon, sell a $100 item for $50, pay groupon $25. Get $25 for your $100 item.

From this, Groupon is raking it in compared to ebay, but sellers are saying "fuck that" to the value of posting deals.

Because the company I work for is trying to build a Groupon knock-off, they've been looking at the groupon data, and have noticed that if you look at the return customers, there are really very few. Meaning: "lots of hype, try it once, never come back!"

Once one reads enough books on investing, one learns that these are exactly the types of stocks to avoid. I wouldn't touch that Groupon IPO with a ten foot pole. Simple intuition tells me, the company is not worth 20 billion dollars.

It's already ten years old..It's called Restaurant.com

Around here those sites are very popular, in the last year maybe 50-100 new sites popped up, all offering daily "deals", some of them are actually good but most are crap...from what I hear they take in %18-%23, and I'm talking about a site that got bought by groupon for a couple of mil.

there is 20+ clones just in my small country, what is going in world who will know

Buy all accounts Lefkofsky was already quite a wealthy guy. I don't think it will change him too much.

Groupon will be like AOL.... They will go IPO, buy up other people and then their original business will be crap... But they will own Universal, Saab, Sony, BMW and a host of other businesses where people actually come back.

first, how does the company you work for have 'groupon data'? and if it's true that the % of return visitors is low from Groupon then Groupon and its clones will be a fad. One thing though, small businesses are like small webmasters, desperate for customers/traffic, so they'll keep buying crap Groupon customers the way desperate webmasters still are buying and paying far too much for traffic from brokers and ad networks. Because the only other option is to watch your new business fail, as a good % of new small businesses do.

For many businesses Groupon is a can't lose marketing opportunity, if I own a bowling alley or a gym or a golf driving range and it's never filled on a weeknight I can do a Groupon offer for weeknights and even if I don't get one return customer it really didn't cost me anything.

I think Groupon will be a great opportunity to short sell - it's a cute idea that already has a thousand imitators.

He got his start selling carpets on the street. That's interesting. Selling carpets on the street is probably cheaper than selling carpets inside a store. Groupon seems like a successful e-commerce company. Congratulations, Groupon.

Groupon published from their IPO.

Look up Nathan Tinkler - 500k to nearly 1 billion now and only 37

If he had a million to drop into a start up he was already doing OK I'm sure!

Groupon is fucking dumb, anyone that values that at 20billion is even dumber

I know a guy who invested $400k in 1984 as startup capital for a company that later sold for $4B! He made out like a bandit.

Groupon is only in 8 cities. At $7 billion IPO, do these investors really think the website is worth ~1 billion per city?!?!?