In pursuit of profitability, the company has attempted pivot after re-pivot, including a partnership with ticket vendors to concerts and events, called GrouponLive. Aaron Cooper, the company’s North America president, is its interim leader.

The company’s original CEO was ousted in 2013 and replaced by Rich Williams, who stepped down from his role in March 2020. Since its IPO, the company has struggled to remain afloat, with occasional profitable quarters in 2014, 2017, and the final quarter of 2019. It is currently trading at less than 5% of that initial valuation, at around $515 million, with its share price down from $70 to about $18 year-on-year. Nine years since its IPO, with coupons long having lost the relevance they once had, Groupon is struggling. In 2010, Groupon spurned a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google, before going on to IPO in June 2011 at $12.7 billion - then the largest IPO for a tech company since Google’s own offering, in 2004. Barely two years after launching, the company’s vouchers were available in 250 cities around the world, with 35 million registered users. As one of the original retail startups, the Chicago-based company was known for its quirky sensibility, including a now-abandoned mascot, Mister Groupon the Cat, who wore a gold chain and rode a spaceship. There was a voucher available for almost anything - skydiving, a steak dinner, cut-price lunch hour liposuction - often at ludicrously low prices and in limited quantities. In the months after Groupon launched, in November 2008, so-called Groupon anxiety was rife. Coined in 2010, and permanently enshrined on, the phrase described the “preoccupation and feeling of anxiousness and not being able to sleep knowing that a new Groupon will be released after 1am.” You seldom hear the expression “Groupon anxiety” these days.

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