Groupon

Groupon runs an online marketplace where consumers buy discounted vouchers for local services, experiences and goods from merchants. It launched in Chicago in November 2008, growing out of The Point, a collective action website created by Andrew Mason, and was co founded by Mason, Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. Dušan Šenkypl has been chief executive since March 2023.

According to its IPO prospectus, New Enterprise Associates bought $4.8 million of Series D preferred stock in January 2008. In November 2009 Groupon raised $30 million in Series E preferred, with Accel Growth Fund investing $20 million and NEA $10 million; Accel's Kevin Efrusy joined the board alongside NEA's Peter Barris. In April 2010 it sold $135 million of Series F preferred, which Wikipedia attributes to Digital Sky Technologies, and in December 2010 and January 2011 it raised $946 million of Series G preferred from third party investors. Most of those two later rounds, $119.9 million and $809.8 million, was used to buy back stock from existing holders. Maveron funds also invested in early 2011. In December 2010 Groupon rejected a Google acquisition offer of $5.3 billion plus a $700 million earnout.

Groupon priced its IPO on Nasdaq on November 4, 2011, selling 35 million Class A shares at $20, for net proceeds of about $649.8 million. With about 637.8 million shares outstanding after the offering, the IPO price implied a market value near $12.8 billion. At listing NEA owned about 87.5 million shares and Accel about 33.2 million. After the IPO the business shrank: SEC filings show revenue of $3.0 billion in 2016, $1.4 billion in 2020, $514.9 million in 2023, $492.6 million in 2024 and $498.4 million in 2025. The company cut about 1,100 positions in 2015.

Groupon is one of the starkest examples of venture timing. NEA entered three years before the IPO with $4.8 million and, with its follow on investment, held a stake worth roughly $1.7 billion at the IPO price. The company reached a public listing about three years after launch, but much of the late private capital went to secondary purchases from insiders rather than the business, and public shareholders who bought at the IPO saw revenue fall by more than 80 percent from its peak over the following decade.