Groupon CEO: Company Needs To "Grow Up," "Stop Taking Stupid Risks"
By Chuck Sudo in News on Apr 26, 2012 4:00PM
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason held an "all hands on deck" meeting yesterday to address its post-IPO cockups yesterday and said the company needed to "stop taking stupid risks" and "grow up."
In a town hall meeting the Wall Street Journal observed via webcast, Mason, who chugged a beer throughout, said Groupon at this point has no room for error:
"We're still this toddler in a grown man's body in many ways," Mr. Mason said during the closed-door employee meeting, which The Wall Street Journal observed via webcast. At one point during the address, Mr. Mason's voice broke and he said, "Sorry, too much beer."
A Groupon spokesman told the WSJ that beer is often available during these town hall meetings, but the contrast of the company's CEO drinking while saying the company needs to make smarter business decisions only highlights what business analysts find wrong with Groupon.
Business Insider's Henry Blodget wrote that Mason's cavalier attitude in the face of Groupon's missteps is precisely the problem with the company.
"Stop clinging to the wacky-guy 'fun' culture that helped Groupon when the company was first getting started. You're not a wacky little startup anymore. You're a global corporation with more than $1 billion of revenue and 10,000+ employees. By all means, stop 'taking stupid risks'--start taking calculated ones. Also stop trying to be 'funny' and 'cool.' You can still be a great, fun place to work and a company that produces great value for customers without making ironic corporate jokes that no one understands or knows are ironic. (Look at Amazon--it's now the most boring company in the world--and one of the most successful. Same for Apple.)"Lastly, Andrew, stop drinking on the job.
...
"You're the captain of a ship with 10,000 crew members, all of whom have entrusted their livelihoods to you. If you were a crew-member on a ship and the captain called a ship-wide meeting to tell everyone they needed to grow up--and delivered the message while swigging beer--you would understand that the problem came right from the top.
"Commanding a ship is serious business. Leading all-hands meetings is serious business. Doing any job is serious business. You can be a serious professional without giving up your soul. And you can help the company take a big step toward growing up by recognizing that, for very good reasons, no serious professional, especially a professional leader, drinks on the job."
Groupon's stock has plunged since the company went public in November and took a major nosedive in recent weeks after the company disclosed a regulatory filing where they adjusted their fourth quarter earnings statement to account for not setting aside enough cash for customer refunds related to higher-priced deals being offered by the company. Business Insider's April 20 "Chart of the Day" shows how deep Groupon's stock price has plunged.
