Why Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon All Should Have IPO'ed Two Years Ago Instead of Waiting

Unlike the experts who believe Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon should have waited to IPO, I think the companies' rocky results as a public company show they should have gone public much sooner than they did.

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Jackson Says Groupon Share Offering Has `Too Much Risk'

My take on the Groupon IPO: Too much risk

See the video on Forbes here

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Groupon’s Foray Into China Sounds Like a Disaster

Things reportedly aren't going well for Groupon in China.

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The Groupspawn IPO: What Hath It Wrought?

Groupon’s (GRPN) Andrew Mason is wacky.

Even though he killed at the All Things D conference this week, I just don’t get his sense of humor. And I generally don’t like investing in companies led by 30 year olds with no read work experience.

Read the full post on Forbes here.

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4 Things Groupon’s Andrew Mason Needs to Learn from Mark Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg took a personal interest in China and got Facebook a deal done to work with Baidu (BIDU). Groupon's Andrew Mason has made a bunch of mistakes entering the market.

Read my entire post on Forbes.com

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Hold the Groupon IPO

By Eric Jackson
RealMoney Contributor
2/8/2011 7:30 AM EST
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson

No ad from last night's Super Bowl has drawn as much ire as Groupon's ad about Tibet. Even though the company ran three ads last night -- at a cost of $10 million -- that all showed a similar sense of humor, the Tibet ad has potentially thrown a wrench into its IPO plans. In short, that single off-the-cuff ad might have forever closed the entire Chinese market to Groupon. How could this happen?

We live in a Twitter world, where the immediate slight is seized upon and analyzed. Kenneth Cole (KCP - commentary - Trade Now) found that out last week when the company's founder tweeted out an attempt at irony, saying the masses in Egypt didn't need to riot for the new Kenneth Cole collection. It has turned into aPR nightmare for him. Will it affect the actual operating revenue of the company? Hard to say at this point, but it certainly seems to fly in the face of the firm's carefully crafted image as the brand of global concern.

But the Groupon ad is far more damaging in the long run for that company, because it decided to trample over the China-Tibet issue and in the process send a damaging message to the Chinese government and Chinese users.

If Groupon had left it at the two ads focusing on "saving the whales" by going on a whale-watching tour and "saving the rainforest" by going for a Brazilian bikini wax, there would have been the regular post-Super Bowl complaints that the ads were dumb, and that would have been the end of it.

The Tibet ad tried to stick to the same sense of humor by contrasting the solemnity of a serious subject with the goofy idea of saving $15 off a fish curry at a Himalayan restaurant in Chicago. The problem -- besides choosing Tibet as a subject in the first place for a Super Bowl ad, knowing what a touchy subject it is with the Chinese government -- was in the solemn words Groupon chose: "The people of Tibet are in trouble, their very culture is in jeopardy." The words suggest that Groupon sides with the Tibetan people in their political struggle with China -- and that it is the Chinese who are placing the future of the Tibetan culture in jeopardy.

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[*** This post is an excerpt of the full article, available by clicking here to go to RealMoney.com. Note: subscription required. ***]

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More IPOs Are Needed

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor12/15/10 - 06:00 AM EST

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Last night, I watched the Charlie Rose interview with Groupon Founder and CEO Andrew Mason. It was the first time I've seen him speak and, aside from a bad sense of humor, I was impressed.

What grabs your attention is that these guys started a company and reportedly got a $6 billion buyout offer within two years -- in the wake of the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Tony Robbins should make them a case study to pump up his audience at future motivational seminars.

Different reports circulated this past week that Groupon does annualized gross revenues of $2 billion before splitting profits with the merchants they refer business to. That kind of growth demonstrates how -- in an era of Facebook and Twitter -- good ideas and businesses can propagate like crazy.

What's more impressive about Groupon though is it's turning down Google's(GOOG_) generous buyout offer. Instead, it opted to go it alone and grow its business. Here's what Mason said about why it did that: "Here is what I can say. I think every choice we make in the company comes down to a core of this idea we have of what Groupon could be and the place it could play in the world and in the rest of the 21st century. And every choice we make is which option will it make it more possible for us to get there? " So I think whatever we decide to do with the company, the people that we hire, the deals we run, every itty-bitty choices, how do we build this company into something that transforms the way people buy from local businesses."

If the offer on the table for Groupon was $6 billion, Google was offering to pay four times what it paid for YouTube four years ago and double what it paid for DoubleClick three years ago.

We're just not used to people saying no to that kind of money.

Four years ago, Facebook turned down a reported $1 billion offer from Yahoo!(YHOO_)(YHOO). Eighteen months later, Microsoft(MSFT_) invested $240 million in the company at a $15 billion post-money valuation. There were calls at the time that the price was completely unrealistic and showed how desperate Microsoft was to stay relevant. Yet, today, most analysts say the company would be worth $30 billion to $50 billion if it went public.

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