YouTube.
Shopify.
Groupon.
Before tech giants like these became household names.
They were just a spark of an idea
championed by entrepreneurs willing to risk it all.
But fame and success didn't come overnight.
Many had to revamp their business models
and pivot their plans time and time again
before discovering a strategy that clicked for customers.
Get inside the minds of founders and CEOs
who stopped at nothing to bring their vision to life.
This is Make It Work.
Tech Giants.
Founder of Groupon, Andrew Mason
started with an idea that almost failed.
How did he turn a near failure
into the multibillion dollar company
we know today as Groupon?
Mason was a first time founder
who dropped out of grad school to build a business he believed in.
With encouragement and funding
Andrew had a lot on the line, but no clear direction
on how he was actually going to build this company.
It was called "The Point"
It was essentially a collective action website
where people could come together and change things as a group.
The idea came to Mason while watching TV.
He thought it was an outdated concept
that he had to pay for a bunch of channels he didn't even need
and thought there must be a lot of other people who felt the same way.
He began to think, What if there was a platform where like-minded people
could all get together to incentivize corporations to listen to them?
Mason described the platform as
a way to say I'll do something,
but only if a critical mass of other people does it with me.
A project on the platform sets a monetary goal and a purpose.
Individual people can pledge money to the project,
but no money is exchanged unless the entire goal is met,
which was called the "tipping point".
This allowed people to contribute without feeling like
their money was being wasted or they were alone in the deal.
Well, that solved one problem.
There was another really big issue that was becoming clear
as more and more people started using the site.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Mason said, "It's this huge abstract idea,"
"You can use this platform to do anything"
"from boycotting a multinational company"
"to getting 20% off a subscription to The Economist."
"That's the big problem with it."
After nine months, the company was struggling to survive
and the investors were getting nervous that this wasn't going to work.
Mason began to fear they would lose their funding
when he was just getting started.
Mason and his team looked
deep into how people were using the platform.
Trying to figure out what was working
It turns out that users were getting together and buying things
as a group to get discounts on a product.
If they reached a certain amount of people buying into the discount
the "tipping point" would activate
and everyone got something they wanted for less.
Mason was able to convince the investors to hang on a while longer
while they focused completely on this side of the business.
He called it "Get Your Groupon"
combining user based collective buying power with the tipping point.
Mason and his small team made
hundreds of phone calls a day to local businesses in Chicago.
They brought together small businesses who needed more customers
and customers who wanted more deals,
which seemed like the perfect solution.
Mason was on to something.
It took off and they were growing fast,
adding more subscribers daily.
They no longer had to call businesses every day.
They were actually turning them away.
They couldn't handle the volume.
Within six months,
they opened in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C.
They began opening in a city every month,
which grew to two cities, then four.
Mason had created a formula for launching city by city.
In less than a year and a half they grew from 12 employees to 350.
According to Forbes, Groupon had become the fastest growing company ever
and was valued at $1 billion.
In October 2010, Yahoo! offered $4 billion to acquire Groupon,
but the board rejected the offer.
Then Google offered 5.3 billion for the company,
and they rejected that one, too.
They were growing faster than ever
and decided to keep the company independent.
On November 4th 2011 Groupon IPO'd.
They raised $700 million in one day
and the company was valued at nearly $13 billion.
Groupon now has an
annual revenue of $1.4 billion,
with over 25.8 million
active customers worldwide.
Mason had many trials and tribulations,
but through dedication and creativity
he was able to make it work