LivingSocial

So, um, you know, you can't provide, like, sort of an ancillary, like, value proposition to those guys.

Um, and then the second question is, like, even assuming that you somehow, uh, can provide va- enough value that they actually want to take time out of their busy day to use your service, the second question is, like, how the heck are you gonna reach small and medium sized businesses? Um, it's, it's why- You know, Groupon and LivingSocial and those daily deals companies had initial success is because they created such a crazy, like, amazing business model that they could afford to pay these gigantic sales forces to, you know, call on small businesses, right? And it was only because their business model for, for Groupon was so amazing, they got all their cash, you know, all their cash up front, that they could sort of front-load it.

But now you're seeing with, you know, LivingSocial every... you know, and Groupon, both of them, right? Like, they, their growth started to plateau, so all of a sudden they were in danger of, like, oh shit, without new money coming in the door and all the costs coming afterward, they, you know, they almost went out of business, right? Um, so, uh, you know, those are the pitfalls of small and medium-sized businesses.

I do think you can add substa- I think they're, you know, they're amenable to the idea of, I pay money on the internet and new people walk into my store.

They don't want to buy c- the, the one thing about knowing about that market is they don't want to buy clicks, right? Like, to date, up until Groupon, LivingSocial, a lot of, like, web people, tech people that were trying to, you know, build services for SMBs were building, like, tech services for them, like driving people to their webpage and things like that.

And but they don't even know what to do with someone.

They're not e-commerce, they're not an e-commerce person.

They don't... you know, they're not focused on converting page views into clicks and then in a funnel, and then driving conversions for some online purchase.

So I said, "Well, if I could bring you people to this resort, would you pay me a percentage of what I bring?" He was like, "Absolutely.

That's the best deal I ever heard." So I put his resort on Groupon and LivingSocial, and back then they were just so hot and popular.

And he had, like, 200 bookings overnight.

I made a lot of money real quickly and started rebuilding my business.

I was, I was gonna kind of say, y- your last business was similar? It was a similar kind of grind or...?

No, it was in the daily deals space, you know, back when there was like a lot of Groupons, LivingSocial-

Okay

...

We've seen the evolution of many things.

And so when Groupon first came out and some of its competitors like Living Social and other sort of coupon, they were coupon sites, right? So you signed up.

with your email.

It was really like email aggregators.

Number three, share an experience.

One of my favorite things about using sites like Groupon.com or LivingSocial is that they offer such amazing deals I can usually afford to buy two coupons and pass one along as a gift.

For example, there was a spa deal in my city for 50% off the normal price, which meant I could buy one for myself and one for my sister who had a birthday coming up.

When I presented her with the gift certificate, I told her we'd be going together, a girl's day out.

I went and worked at a couple of other startups and small companies, some that like Opower, which was a clean tech company that grew and sold utilities and enterprises and, you know, dealing with state and local governments who are the prime regulators.

I worked for a company called Living Social, which blew up very fast and was a local marketplace.

But, you know, I got into a bike accident in 2011 and I was fine.

I was riding my bike up the street, car turned in front of me, hit the car, broke the rear window.