Groupon

Groupon is an e-commerce website that offers coupons and discounted gift certificates to both local and national businesses. The name is a portmanteau of the words group and coupon. Groupon was founded in November 2008 by Eric Lefkofsky, Brad Keywell, and Andrew Mason. Groupon was born from The Point, a 2007 web platform that used social media as a tool to organize people around the same cause or goal. It became focused on coupons when The Point's small following decided they wanted to round up groups of people to buy a product and receive group discounts. Dusan Senkypl has served as Groupon's CEO since March 2023.

Google offered to purchase Groupon for $6 billion in December 2010, but Groupon declined and launched its initial public offering (IPO) in November 2011, raising $700 million. The IPO was the largest of any internet company since Google's $1.66 billion IPO in 2004. In less than a year, Groupon's stock lost 75 percent of its value. By March 2023, the stock had lost 99.4 percent of its IPO value.