After a disappointing earnings call last week, Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason was fired.
Shortly after the news broke, Mason published an amusing goodbye letter to his colleagues.
While some of it was straight forward ("I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today"), other parts were vague.
Tech investor Marc Andreessen took to RapGenius, a startup his VC firm invested in, to uncover the hidden meaning behind Mason's farewell memo.
Here's what Andreessen thinks Mason really meant, but didn't directly say (his comments are in red, Mason's original letter is in black).
People of Groupon,
After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. [Andreessen: "Over the last 20 years it has become customary in business for executives to claim to be “resigning to spend more time with my family” when they have actually been fired. It has become such a cliche that it is now a sort of running joke in corporate-speak. (The additional subtext to the joke is that most executives are not liked by their families, who would prefer that they not spend more time at home and try to get them into a new job as quickly as possible.)"]
If you're wondering why... you haven't been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that's hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable. [Andreessen: "Andrew is referring to the use of non-standard financial metrics in the company’s SEC filings, particularly in the IPO filing (S1). As someone who was in the room as an observer at the Groupon board when the decision to use these metrics was made, I think Groupon was honestly trying to provide additional information that investors would find useful, which mirrored the way management thought about running the business. However, no good deed goes unpunished, and widespread media paranoia about business metrics still lingering from the 2000 dot com crash combined with other missteps on Groupon’s part combined to make the use of those non-standard metrics highly controversial and ultimately negative for the company."]
You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I'm getting in the way of that. A fresh CEO earns you that chance. The board is aligned behind the strategy we've shared over the last few months, and I've never seen you working together more effectively as a global company - it's time to give Groupon a relief valve from the public noise. [Andreessen: "At one point, Groupon was sort of two companies in one — the US operation that was built and run by a team of executives recruited by Andrew, and the international operation that resulted from an acquisition of a company founded by the famous Samwer brothers. The Samwers enjoyed broad autonomy to run the international operations largely separately from the US operations for several quarters. In the last year, one of Andrew’s big challenges was to integrate the US and international operations into a single global business."]
For those who are concerned about me, please don't be - I love Groupon, and I'm terribly proud of what we've created. I'm OK with having failed at this part of the journey. [Andreessen: "This is probably the one disingenuous note in the entire letter. (Versus resignation letters from most other CEOs which would be 100% disingenuous.) However, the underlying truth is that the creation and growth of the company under Andrew as CEO from inception through last year was a miracle of accomplishment."]
If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first ever play through. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to take the company this far with all of you. I'll now take some time to decompress (FYI I'm looking for a good fat camp to lose my Groupon 40, if anyone has a suggestion), and then maybe I'll figure out how to channel this experience into something productive.
If there's one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what's best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness - don't waste the opportunity!
I will miss you terribly.
Love,
Andrew
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