Michael Arrington Invented Groupon in 2005 (Idea 4)

http://techcrunch.com/2005/11/21/companies-id-like-to-profile-but-dont-exist/

by ziadbc • 15 years ago

24 16 15 years ago

techcrunch.com

wushupork• 15 years ago

Apparently he also came up with dropbox

meatmanek• 15 years ago

More like Carbonite, Backblaze, Mozy, Crashplan, etc.

finebanana• 15 years ago

and ordered bullet list

sradnidge• 15 years ago

Proving once again, an idea without execution is worth precisely fuck all. All the non-technical founders out there trying to rip the executors in terms of equity, take note.

quattrofan• 15 years ago

Exactly, "inventing" is the wrong word, if you invent you build, an idea by itself is useless without execution.

chopsueyar• 15 years ago

"Useless" is also the wrong word.

hvs• 15 years ago

Execution is more than building a site. Groupon, especially, is an example of a site that is successful due to the deals that they can negotiate and their quality writing.

That's not to say that I disagree with you that the builders deserve good equity as well.

nikcub• 15 years ago

I wouldn't say invented so much as 'foresaw the large opportunity'.

It popped up on Techcrunch a lot before GroupOn, ie. how is it that the $170B local ad market has been left untouched by the web?

ewalk153• 15 years ago

Ideas are cheap, good execution is worth millions (or in Groupon's case billions).

patio11• 15 years ago

Greoup buying has been done many times before, including in the bubble. GroupOn has the distinction of working. I also think it is essentially orthogonal to the original group buying aspect but that was useful pretraction.

paulnelligan• 15 years ago

he's also listed spotify/grooveshark there in number 6 ...

anyway, I would hardly call having an idea an invention ... the invention is the implementation of that idea, which is worth nothing until it's actually implemented ...

beerglass• 15 years ago

Is Dropbox today's answer to idea #1?

yeahsure• 15 years ago

"500 GB for $20 per year" I wish!

quan• 15 years ago

If Arrington had invented Groupon, he would have invented Groupon

briggers• 15 years ago

A business idea is conjecture, execution is an experiment.

The word 'invented' here is a vocabulary failure.

random42• 15 years ago

<snark> and I invented time machine in 2001 </snark>

Idea means almost nothing. Execution is the hard part.

Michael Arrington Invented Groupon in 2005 (Idea 4)

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