Chapter 345： Groupon, the originator of group buying

Since he came to California, after separating from Musk, William Chen stopped by Los Angeles to visit Nozomi Sasaki and the child in her womb.

When Ivanta was pregnant, she did not go to check the **** of the child in advance, but Nozomi Sasaki did not hold back her curiosity and went to check, and learned that she was also pregnant with a girl.

In this way, Chen William has already named the child in advance, and it is called Chen Xiran, which also has Sasaki Nozomi's name in it - Xi.

Nozomi Sasaki really likes this name. When she was expecting to give birth in Los Angeles for the past few months, she was not idle, she has been learning Chinese, and now she is able to conduct daily conversations with William Chen fluently.

Chen William sometimes thinks that his children will probably speak several languages ​​in the future, such as Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean... Anyway, there is no lack of language environment since childhood.

In the villa in Malibu, Rick Walton came to meet William Chen.

"Congratulations, William, I originally wanted to go to New York with Delphine to see Ivanta and the little princess, but I didn't expect you to come to Los Angeles, so I came over to see you first, I'll say it first, her name is Anna. Well, I've decided to be her godfather, and I can't give it to others."

Rick Walton first congratulated William Chen on his wedding.

"Then why don't you work harder with Delphine, oh, by the way, you haven't had a formal wedding yet, Rick. Look at me, I've come from behind, I already have children, you need to step up."

It was shown by Musk before, and now William Chen seizes the opportunity and naturally can't miss the opportunity to show it in front of Rick Walton.

"Uh, the wedding, I'm afraid we will have to wait until next year. Delphine's schedule is very full recently. You know, she is a very enterprising woman."

Hearing Rick Walton say this, William Chen couldn't say anything. Anyway, in his opinion, looking for a partner would definitely not find a daughter from a super rich family like Delphine, and Delphi Na's character is still so strong...

Thinking of this, William Chen glanced at Rick meaningfully. Could it be that do you have any special hobbies that no one knows about?

In addition to these, Rick came over this time and talked to William Chen about business matters. It wasn't entirely Zoom's, but it also had something to do with Zoom.

When he first founded Zoom, William Chen once mentioned to Rick Walton the newly established group buying website, Groupon. At that time, this website was still very useful for Zoom in its infancy, at least it could provide data support for Zoom's self-operated products based on the popularity of their group purchases.

At that time, Rick contacted Groupon, and finally invested $40 million in the company at a post-investment valuation of $100 million, and got 40% of the shares, becoming the largest investor in Groupon.

After their investment, Groupon developed rapidly, because the subprime mortgage crisis broke out in 2010, which caused a financial tsunami and paralyzed Wall Street, and this background provided the soil for the growth of the group buying economy.

And Groupon just took the "east wind" of the economic crisis and became a winner who grew up in that soil. Due to the severe overproduction and sluggish consumption during the economic crisis, many companies are facing the pressure of destocking. Low-priced group buying is a good way to stimulate consumption and destock.

Groupon has never missed this opportunity for development. Not only has it been actively promoted, but it has also refinanced and carried out a series of acquisitions to expand their market share.

Zoom participated in Groupon's A round of financing. In the B round of financing half a year later, William Chen's Meta investment also participated. At a post-investment valuation of $500 million, it invested $100 million and obtained Groupon's 20 % of the shares, and Zoom also continued to follow the investment, maintaining a 40% shareholding ratio.

Using the funds and making acquisitions, Groupon became the fastest growing company in the world last year.

In June, Groupon acquired Berlin-based company CityDealGmbH, expanding its business to 80 markets in Europe; in August, it acquired a majority stake in Japanese shopping site Qpod and Russian shopping site Darberry; in October, it has 150 markets in North America Do business with 100 markets in Europe, Asia and South America.

At the end of 2010, the number of Groupon users reached 25 million, and the turnover reached 500 million US dollars; now in 2011, it easily has 60 million registered users and more than 5,000 employees. It is expected that by the end of the year, the number of users will exceed 100 million...

And Groupon has planned to be listed on the Nasdaq exchange in the United States before the end of the year, turning it from a small start-up company into a multinational listed company.

Now that Zoom and William Chen hold more than 60% of Zoom's stock, Rick Walton learned from Groupon's founder Andrew that Groupon is preparing to make another final round of financing before going public, this time Their financing amount will be around 200 million US dollars, and the company's valuation will exceed 2 billion US dollars, so he asked Chen William's opinion whether to participate in this financing.

"I can hear what Andrew means. He doesn't want us to participate in this financing, because before the listing, he wants to optimize the company's shareholder holdings. Our shareholding is too high in his opinion."

Rick Walton said.

Chen William can understand what he means. Andrew hopes to introduce new shareholders to make Groupon's shareholding structure more beneficial to the entrepreneurial team, and does not want to release too many shares, because it is going to be an IPO later, so he took out 10 % of the shares are used for financing.

And Groupon's rapid development this year, even if the number of users has reached 60 million, but there is still a lot of room for growth.

Not only the United States, but all over the world, especially in Europe, have been affected by the economic crisis. On the one hand, people's income has declined, leading to more cautious consumption; on the other hand, the sales situation is not ideal, and merchants also have a great need to clear their inventory.

Therefore, in this case, the group buying model has been greatly welcomed, and it is normal for Groupon to reach and exceed 80 million or even 100 million users in the second half of the year.

Then their valuation of 2 billion US dollars is not impossible, because in this year, Groupon's performance is too bright.

If William Chen and Zoom are still involved in this financing, then Andrew's plan will be meaningless, which is not what he hopes.

However, William Chen has his own ideas. If he only dilutes 10% of the shares, he can still accept it. Although the group buying model is currently regarded as a new model with great potential, to be honest, William Chen is very concerned about Groupon The company is not looking long-term.

Because with the rise of Groupon, one after another imitators flocked in.

In the field of group buying without industry barriers, it is no exaggeration to say that a website and a phone can become a group buying enterprise.

Therefore, the group buying market will soon have a large influx of entrepreneurs. Just like the thousand-group battle in the previous world, the entire group buying industry fell into a red sea, and various merchants launched fierce hand-to-hand battles.

And the giants are also coveting this piece of fat that everyone seems to be fat, just like Google, Facebook and other giants will launch group buying websites, and Groupon is facing the battle of these large and small entrants.

From the blue ocean to the red ocean, it means that the group buying business is not so easy to do The future is not optimistic.

With the passage of time, at most three or four years, the economic crisis will gradually fade away and the economy will gradually recover.

The cold winter has passed, and the inventory that needs to be cleared has basically been processed. The enthusiasm of merchants for low-priced group purchases will inevitably weaken, because low-cost group purchases are just a means of promotion for merchants.

At that time, the group buying business will face the difficulty of sustaining high-speed growth, and Groupon will also bear the brunt, and a sharp decline in performance is to be expected.

Unless, like Huaguo’s Meituan.com, it can shift its business from group buying to local life services, including community group buying and takeaway. If so, there is still hope of rising again.

However, judging from the experience of William Chen's previous life, Groupon did make an attempt in this regard later, but it was also later, after group buying had completely declined.

In the previous life, after 2013, Groupon's stock price once fell from $28 to $2.15, and its market value shrank from $23 billion to $520 million. Since then, it has been a long period of stock price downturn.

It was not until 2015 that it started to make a profit after re-turning its business, and slowly made its performance satisfactory to investors.

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