“What’s just depressing to me is how—and it’s not just for us, let me generalize it—the moment a company goes public the conversation shifts from how they’re trying to change the world and the product they’re building to how they’re making money. All the coverage around Facebook’s new search tool was, a little bit about the feature and then it gets immediately into how the market is reacting to it. Like, who the fuck cares?”
Elizabeth Spiers: “One month ago, I interviewed then-Groupon CEO Andrew Mason for a forthcoming Fast Company feature on the future of Groupon. His performance—at turns, defensive, weary, combative, and naïve—foreshadowed his firing on Thursday.”
Photo Issue 2011: Andrew Mason is the unlikely CEO of last year’s unlikeliest breakout business, Groupon. The 30-year-old Midwestern music grad has transformed the bottom-feeding coupon trade into a billion-dollar force that even sexy Google lusted after.
