

LivingSocial co-founder Aaron Battalion quits - funkbot
http://aaronbatalion.com/post/46617716711/moving-on-to-new-adventures

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funkbot
Something about rats and sinking ships. Hope all the talent there is planning
their exit before the company exits for them. LivingSocial is not long for
this world.

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lawnchair_larry
Is anything LivingSocial did something to be proud of? It seems like the
majority of those who invested in or did business with LivingSocial suffered
greatly. That's fine, sometimes things don't work out, but I don't know why
you'd brag about it.

 _"millions of consumers around the world have experienced their local cities
because of our products"_

Sounds like he is reaching, just a bit...

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eclipticplane
> "millions of consumers around the world have experienced their local cities
> because of our products"

I think its a fair assessment, but not the full story.

Millions of people _did_ do things they wouldn't normally do. No way in hell
I'm going to pay $200 for a family "dolpin tour" where you usually don't see
dolphins, but when it's on LivingSocial (or similar sites) for $50? Sure, why
not.

Now, whether it was a boon or bust for local businesses or not is a debated
topic. I'm pretty sure that dolphin tour place actually lost money on my trip,
or came close to break-even at most, and we were one time customers.

~~~
alxbrun
Really weird for a dolphin tour business to do a coupon deal... How on earth
would somebody become a regular customer of a dolphin tour ?

~~~
jazzyb
I would imagine they're hoping the people using the coupons have a good time
and then tell their friends about it, and the tour gains more money through
word-of-mouth.

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dmbaggett
I met Aaron when I was on a panel with him at Bootstrap Maryland, before
Living Social was big. He was a class act then, and he obviously still is.

Living Social -- more than any other company in the last 5 years -- showed
that the DC area startup community is alive and well and can play with the big
boys in the consumer internet space. LS almost single-handedly overcame the
region's inferiority complex in this regard. I hope Aaron is sufficiently
proud of the role he played there.

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nchuhoai
Quite a few commentators on this entry seem to debate whether LS was a "good"
or "bad" thing.

The ones debating "good", say it allowed consumers to get great deals,
merchants to get coverage, and employees to be employed.

The ones debating "bad", say it caused businesses to do dumb decisions and
VC's to do dumb decisions.

All in all, I'd say Groupon/LS was good for the world, because it is exactly
to show what happens with these kind of VC-businesses. They need to scale
large, and not all of them can become sustainable. Clearly, someone needs to
get screwed in the mean time.

We need more profilic failures like Groupon/LS, because obviously the VC model
has been the holy grail for quite some time (less so now then lets say two
years ago). I don't mean to hate on the VC model (like dhh for example), I
like it a lot for many business models. In fact, I liked it for Groupon as
well. We just should keep in mind what we are dealing with. Like so many
times, information is the key, and the ones that got screwed over are usually
the ones that trust blindly.

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mailarchis
There is a bit of irony in the timing. Living Socials first product was visual
bookshelf. They pivoted to daily deals business.

Fast forward 6 years, amazon acquires goodreads while all daily deal sites are
struggling.

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kaa2102
There are a lot of negative comments about LivingSocial's business model. The
irony is that a lot of what I see on HN and in tech is about mobile, social
media, and games.

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biznickman
Why are all the comments so negative on this thread? Aaron has personally
contributed a ton to the communities he's a part of and I have no doubt the
same goes for LivingSocial. It's a company of thousands of employees and one
that most definitely has a massive consumer impact. Whether or not the
business thrives or fails, few people on this site can say they founded
something with anywhere near as much a reach as LS. That's an accomplishment.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
I think the comments on this and other LivingSocial threads are negative
because many have the perception that LivingSocial was a net negative force on
the world. This is a pretty reasonable reaction.

Things like "impact" and "reach" are orthogonal to whether or not something of
value was contributed. Let's face it, it was a boiler room with immense reach.
Technically I suppose you can call that an "accomplishment", but I wouldn't
call it an admirable one.

I'm not saying he's a bad guy (I know nothing about him), but I think that
their founders should be doing less boasting and more apologizing. I don't
know that the problems they caused were intentional, but I have to think that
they must have taken some notice when it was apparent that they were pushing
their staff to sell unsustainable products. Sometimes it's hard to notice
these things when you're pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars by cashing
out early though.

~~~
joonix
A net negative force on the world? Seriously? How is that? I got good deals,
businesses got to try a new marketing method, many did well, some poorly. No
businesses were coerced or forced into offering a coupon on LS. I fail to see
how they are a negative force or anything worse than a publisher like Yellow
Pages selling ads.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
If you really don't see how LivingSocial caused more problems than the Yellow
Pages, I don't think we will be able to start a discussion.

Nobody was forced to buy those mortgages either, right?

~~~
achompas
To be fair to parent, they may not know about the terrible experience of a
local business who works with Groupon, LS, or another daily deals site.

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ttrreeww
The end must be near.

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niggler
That was obvious for a long time.

Last big discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5255362>

~~~
ttrreeww
I remember that, but wow, that was only 36 days ago.

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jrochkind1
Not much to report... but an incredible love of ellipses. Maybe I burned a few
periods, but, man, you have no idea what kinds of grammatical innovation are
yet to come. Always remember... punctuate to live don't live to punctuate.

