He eventually became an angel investor in Gimlet. Because Mason and I were both involved in audio, we got to know each other a bit. I met Mason in 2013, around the same time my co-founder and I were starting the podcasting company Gimlet. It’s called Descript, and it makes software that transcribes and edits spoken-word audio. These days, Mason is a CEO of a much smaller company, of just ten employees. This dream rise and nightmare fall, in an incredibly short span of time, is almost like the comic-book version of a start-up story. If you’re wondering why … you haven’t been paying attention.” After Groupon’s stock had dropped to a quarter of its IPO price, Mason was fired, and his tenure is perhaps best recalled by the frank letter he sent to employees announcing his departure: “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. Faster than Google.Īnd then, just as rapidly and just as dramatically, its fortunes changed.
Within two years of its founding, Groupon was earning hundreds of millions a month in revenue and was valued at several billion dollars. Through that work, he’d met tech billionaire Eric Lefkofsky, and Mason had mentioned to him this idea for a website he wanted him to fund. He was a graduate student in his mid-20s, making money on the side by building websites. Photo: Noah Berger/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesĪndrew Mason started Groupon ten years ago. Andrew Mason at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in 2010.
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