Google offered $6B to buy Groupon. Instead they took a private financing deal which allowed the founders and others to take some money off the table and go for an IPO.
The $6B from Google was real. The risk of proceeding was tempered by the private money. Nothing dishonest happened here. All that happened was a little overexuberance about the scalability of their business model.
While it's true that some people (including me) thought their model non-scalable back at the time, it's also true that a broken (analog) clock is right twice a day.
Everyone made their bets and they're all big boys and girls. That includes the public investors as well as the private ones.
Wasn't there some speculation at that time that Groupon may have shied away from the Google offer since they would have had to open up their books completely to an audit before the deal would have closed? (and they possibly didn't want to contend with the possibility of a botched Google deal)
What was the earn out? What was the due diligence before that was inked? I question that valuation whenever it comes up. Seems awful convenient to turn down $6B from the world's most analytical company, just before a public offering.
Unless Google would have to agreed to a $6 Billion fee in the event of not being allowed to buy them, it wasn't, there was speculation that it may be blocked by the DOJ. Imagine being in limbo for 18 months or so when you need to grow. They took a chance and lost. Or some of them lost, execs did sell a bunch of stock
The $6B from Google was real. The risk of proceeding was tempered by the private money. Nothing dishonest happened here. All that happened was a little overexuberance about the scalability of their business model.
While it's true that some people (including me) thought their model non-scalable back at the time, it's also true that a broken (analog) clock is right twice a day.
Everyone made their bets and they're all big boys and girls. That includes the public investors as well as the private ones.