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.
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.
Seriously? Everything I heard was unremittingly negative.
