Andrew D. Mason Businessman Also Entrepreneur the founder and former CEO of Groupon, a Chicago-based website presenting user reductions on neighborhood organizations and scholarships. He is also the author and CEO of descript, an audio modifying tool for podcasters.
Andrew become hired as a developer at inner workings, an organization founded via Lefkosia, in 2006. Letofsky furnished mason with $1 million in “seed money” to bankroll the point, mason’s first entrepreneurial undertaking on the internet.
It became determined that the factor – a social projects platform whose name changed into stimulated by Malcolm gladwell’s the tipping factor – become too abstract to the marketplace, and it becomes stripped all the way down to the Groupon idea, a website that sells offers to neighborhood agencies.
Groupon’s internet site states that on the grounds that it’s beginning in November 2008, Groupon has sold more than six million deals. With Groupon taking 50 percent of every deal, plus a small credit score-card handling fee in past due 2010 it turned into mentioned via mashable that Groupon’s annual sales changed into $800 million.
In 2010, mason’s earnings become $a hundred and eighty,000; “at his very own recommendation” it turned into reduced to $756.72 effective January 1, 2011, according to the company’s sec filings.
In 2011, he sold $10 million worth of Groupon stock before the company went public in November. He nonetheless owns 46 million class stocks.
On december 18, 2012, mason became named “worst ceo of the 12 months” by herb greenberg of cnbc. Greenberg wrote, in part, “mason’s goofball antics, that can come off greater like a massive child than agency leader, almost make a mockery of company management – especially for an agency with a marketplace fee of greater than $3 billion.
It would be reasonable, even endearing if the corporation had been doing properly (think herb Kelleher of southwest airlines) but it’s now not. Income boom is thru the floor.
Mason became dismissed as Groupon’s CEO on February 28, 2013, the day after the agency overlooked analysts’ expectations for sales, and fell a long way brief of the mark whilst it got here to profit. in a letter to Groupon employees on the day of his dismissal, he wrote in part:
After four and a 1/2 severe and extraordinary years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve determined that I would want to spend more time with my own family. Just kidding – I was fired today. In case you’re questioning why… You have not been paying interest.
From questionable metrics in our s1 to our fabric weak spot to two quarters of missing our personal expectations and an inventory rate that is soaring round one sector of our list rate, the occasions of the closing yr and a half of communication for themselves. As CEO, I’m accountable.
Reporters envisioned that his severance pay becomes just $378.36 6months’ well worth of salary based totally on his employment settlement and his state-of-the-art public salary information.
Mason released a motivational rock album entitled rarely workin’ in July 2013 through iTunes and Spotify. A journalist defined the album in the following manner: “you’re now not going to bump hardly workin’, ever.
But you might provide it a spin for amusing, and it’s really worth that a good deal. Perhaps no longer $9.99 on iTunes, but you can endure a Spotify ad or two simply to pay attention someone in tech does something honestly stupid.”
the album turned into produced by using Don Gehman, who has worked with r.E.M. And john Mellencamp, and the incentive in the back of the album turned into explained at the website of new york’s a day by day news:
I managed over 12,000 people at Groupon, most underneath the age of 25. One aspect that surprised me become that many might arrive at orientation with minimal expertise of basic business understanding….It changed in with this in mind that I spent per week in l. A.
In advance this month recording hardly workin’, a seven-tune album of motivational enterprise music-centered at people newly getting into the staff.”