I'd like to be wrong on this one. My position was that Groupon should not have gone public in its current state.
Because I'm not a Wall Street expert, but just a regular guy, I still hold the slight hope that someone knows better than me, and Groupon did go public for good reasons.
If I end up being right, it's not a victory, it's further proof that our startup world is dominated by speculators who will eventually destroy it to squeeze more money. Nothing to rejoice about.
My position was that Groupon should not have gone public in its current state.
I think a lot of folks felt this way, heck I think even Groupon would have liked to hold off as the time got closer. Unfortunately Groupon put itself in this position, they took a billion dollar VC round and used it, almost exclusively, to pay out early investors instead of putting some back into the business for additional runway. I think both the investors in that round and Groupon management were extremely short sighted at that point and now they reap what they've sown. They were bleeding cash right now, and I think they realize they weren't going to get very favorable terms in another raise, so they went the IPO route to raise operating capital. So yeah they had some damn good reasons to go public right now. They just could have been avoided.
What's wrong with saying "I told you so"? I would say there were more people blindly championing Groupon in the lead-up to the IPO than contrarians. Let the contrarians enjoy their moment, and let the champions eat their crow. As long as we learn our lesson, it's OK.
I definitely don't dispute that – it probably depends on where you hang out online. I saw a lot of rah-rah on the "mainstream" media (CNN, etc.) and aggregators like techmeme.com, etc.
