[mattmaroon]

Well, no. He used Lefkosky's $1m, plus about $1.14 billion in venture funding to make a company that is now worth about $2.8 billion.

Groupon's market cap was just under $13b at IPO I think. Now it's under $3b. Losing 75%+ of your value isn't an accomplishment in the eyes of the public market, it's a dismal failure.

Remember the original dot com bubble? Lots of startups grew to multibillion dollar valuations, some even in the public market, then flamed out. Is that a "very respectable accomplishment"?

Lefkosky took over because it's quite common for the board to lead the hunt for the new CEO. Who else would do it?

And even if you assume that Groupon was well-managed pre-IPO, rather than a Ponzi scheme that used VC capital to buy users and hype themselves into an IPO and then dump a loser of a company onto buyers from the public market, that still doesn't mean Mason's the guy to get them to the next stage. Some people are good early stage CEOs but not late. I quite suspect Mason is neither though.