Groupon is a Cyborg claimed Andrew Mason in a freewheeling onstage interview with Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick at the annual Munich DLD Conference. It is not a Tech company alone, but one that has substantial human interface, as complex as the sphinx or unicorn of yesteryears. In one carefully chosen word the CEO of Groupon told the packed audience that the grit and sweat that goes to making Groupon is beyond the capability of swanky desk evolved tech giants.
Mason elaborated that unlike Google or Facebook, Groupon is an operation based sales and marketing company whose on field presence with local commerce is more important than cyber presence.
“We talk to thousands of merchants on a daily basis, so that is a huge human component” said Mason explaining that his was a complex hybrid company whose technology and human components of business model was not easy to replicate as some may think. He said that his company believed in local commerce and was involved in bringing the customer to the door-step of the local stores. It was just the reverse of taking the store to the customer as in e commerce and needed a lot of human involvement.
Mason said that the complexity of his business model had made early cash rich competitors like web giants Google, Facebook, Opentable and Yelp quit the field. Growing to a subscriber base of 150 million in just 3 years is not easy. However that could happen only because it was supported by an interesting supply chain of offered products with verified inventory levels. This needed a large field presence or human component that has justified his large sales team of 10,000 employees.
Mason surprised all by claiming that 70% of the staff was employed outside the US. He said that ultimately his goal was to change the way people shop locally, and give more buying power to consumers as well as help stores manage their inventory levels in a better way. Now with dozens of goods being added daily across many categories like travel and shopping, his company was increasingly playing the role of a curator making the demand find the supply instead of being only a dealmaker.
I love to write on anything and everything under the sun from Project Management to Poetry, Economics to Travel and Technology. But most of all I love to write about our planet earth, about which you can read more in my blog Ecology to Economics. You may also meet me at http://www.twitter.com/ecothrust
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Tags: Andrew Mason, Groupon, internet dealmaker
