

Whoa... Groupon Generated $760M in Revenue in 2010 - imkevingao
http://mashable.com/2011/02/25/groupon-760-million/

======
chaz
My favorite part was his note to the troops: "By this time next year, we will
either be on our way to becoming one of the great technology brands that
define our generation, or a cool idea by people who were out executed and out
innovated by others that were smarter and harder working."

The original WSJ article:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870340860457616...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703408604576164641411042376.html#ixzz1F31cLWvf)

------
olivercameron
Does Groupon count the 50% that is owed to the vendors in their revenue? If
so, it doesn't feel all that impressive. I'd be more curious to see how much
profit was made.

~~~
alanfalcon
Yes, that is considered Revenue.

~~~
allantyoung
No, it shouldn't count as revenue. The money owed to merchants is considered a
liability and is probably treated as Accounts Payable.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Of course it is revenue.

Think about retail for a moment. The amount of money a retailer takes in is
revenue. The fact that he needs to pay a wholesaler for the items sold doesn't
change that fact.

If the money is being paid to Groupon, it's revenue.

~~~
_delirium
In transactional / middle-men businesses, it's more standard to only report
your percent take as "revenue", rather than including pass-through dollars
(e.g. PayPal only reports their fees as revenue, not all dollars that flow
through PayPal). But I suppose it's unclear if Groupon is that kind of
business; arguably they could be more like a retailer, where it _is_ standard
to include all dollars flowing through as revenue.

------
jc123
If true, that's double the previous speculation that they were making $1MM a
day (revenue).

------
juiceandjuice
Isn't that about half of what facebook brought in?

~~~
imkevingao
Facebook is probably going to bring in a lot more this year with Facebook
Credit and Facebook Place.

Although the revenue is high, the expense for Groupon is probably high as
well, after all it's not cheap to launch that many commercials during the
Superbowl, and have ads at every other corner on mainstream websites.

At least they have income.

------
lkozma
A bit off-topic, but I don't really get Groupon. I looked at it for my region
about 5 times and in each case the offer seemed to be way overpriced even with
the discount and it was something that I wouldn't want even for free, and
possibly not even if I got paid some small amount (for the time wasted).

~~~
us
Then perhaps you lack the fundamentals of business altogether. If there is one
rule I have had to repeat to so many (and only god knows why this even needs
to be said) is that YOU do not represent everyone. Everyone is DIFFERENT and
because people are different, everyone will have different wants and needs.

Just because YOU don't want what Groupon or a similar service offer in your
area for the particular deals you've come across does not mean this applies to
everyone else around you. If you approach every business like that, 99% of the
business in the world will probably be non-existant, after all, I'm sure there
are a lot of things YOU don't use or want.

------
TorKlingberg
I wonder if it is sustainable. Are the merchants actually making good profits
from using Groupon? Will consumers keep visiting Groupon if merchant only post
deals they will actually make money on?

------
ajg1977
~4000 employees generating revenue of 760m, which vendors get a big chunk of,
doesn't seem super impressive. I mean it's a nice amount of income, but it
doesn't seem very 'whoa..'.

~~~
chaz
23x the prior year's earnings, more than a third coming from overseas, and
founded in 2008? Sounds pretty impressive to me.

~~~
olivercameron
With nearly $1 billion in funding, it'd be very disappointing to not be
generating revenue at a very high level.

~~~
dshankar
Check your facts. They turned $166M in funding (as of Dec 2010) into $760M in
revenue for 2010.

How the hell is $1B in funding in Jan 2011 going to retroactively affect
revenue in 2010??

~~~
olivercameron
All I am saying is that if investors are willing to invest $1 billion, the
company should be pulling in pretty high revenues, regardless of the time they
raised the money. Jeez.

------
worldtize
I would of take the 6 billion from google and went to dubai to join the prince
and built an island in the shape of a giant coupon. With such a huge work
force they need to just about monopolize the coupon game before they start
committing suicide for not selling.

