Andrew Mason

One of the things I realized... is how few success stories there are in websites or products or businesses that exist primarily for an altruistic purpose.

The experience is fundamentally different for buying from local businesses than it is for buying consumer goods.

Life is too short to be a boring company.

Life is not about money.

Yeah, it turns out that guys don't like deals on laser hair removal or pole dancing lessons.

If you're open with people and provide context for the decisions that your making, customers will stick with you.

If you have a great business, if you're great at your craft people should be coming in there. It shouldn't be this secret.

Once you have something so deeply infused in your culture and your brand, it would be very difficult to reverse that inertia if you wanted to.

Local businesses have never had a great way to get customers in the door.

I didn't realize how hard it was to run a small business.

Most small business owners are not particularly sophisticated business people. That's not a criticism; they're passionate about cutting hair or cooking food, and that's why they got in the business, not because they have an MBA.

There are over 2,000 direct clones of the Groupon business model. However, there's an equal amount of proof that the barriers to success are enormous. In spite of all those competitors, only a handful are remotely relevant.