A very interesting entrepreneur, in my humble opinion, is Andrew Mason. Andrew is the founder and former CEO of Groupon with a net worth of 200 million dollars. Andrew is particularly interesting to me because he is from Pittsburgh, relatively close to where i am from. Andrew started at a pretty young age when he started a saturday morning delivery service called Bagel Express. What i admire the most about him is his perseverance and drive to ultimately be successful no matter what. He attributes this work ethic to a recording engineer named Steve Albini when he interned at Electrical Audio recording studio in Chicago, Illinois. He also was very confident in his business, which i truly admire, to the point that he turned down a 6 billion dollar offer from Google in 2010. Something interesting about Andrew that may not be the best trait, but something i respect is his ability to stay true to who he was and not letting the money change him. He was known as a big kid who enjoyed keeping it light around the office and goofing around with employees. He did not have a good balance, however, and it resulted in him getting fired from the CEO position. As a result, it is important to recognize the delicate balance that is needed in the business world and that Andrew definitely could have done a better job at that.
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I wonder how he was able to get all of the coupons onto his website for everybody to use. To start out would’ve been very hard, as he had no knowledge of existence from the business world as somebody who could run this company, therefore not many investors lined up. Also, that sucks that you can be fired as CEO of a company you started completely on your own!
I must agree with Caleb. He was brilliant in being patient with the website.
I do think that it would have been hard to start this kind of company. Especially as you would have to wheel-and-deal with clients about what kind of coupons you offer. To the point about being fired as the CEO, there is a certain professionalism that must be maintained in the business world. At my internship at Calgon Carbon this summer, working at the office was fun and enjoyable, but there is also a time and place to get work done. It doesn’t necessarily surprise me that if he wasn’t conducting himself in a professional manner that the board of directors would fire him.
Mason seems like an entrepreneur worth working for. Although his balance wasn’t great, having a relaxed office has seemed to make companies successful. Google is one of those companies that have kept their offices environment fun and relaxed which helps build creativity in their employees. Of course their has to be a balance which Google clearly installs. Groupon was an ingenious idea as well. Its something my family has used a ton in the past. His creative mindset, confidence and ability to stay true to his beliefs and not just think about money is definitely what led him to his success and ability to deny Google.
I like Groupon and Mason because he was able to find a problem that I didn’t even know existed and didn’t know I would use. Whenever I buy something online, I always check groupon before I purchase it. I like how you said the money and power didn’t change him, because I’m sure they gave him warnings that they were going to take action against him if he didn’t shape up. I would guess that he made a conscious decision that being himself was more important than a title in the company.
His idea obviously turned out to be successful considering his net worth. Although it may not have been the best decision to turn down 6 billion dollars from google, it shows how much he believes in his product as you mentioned. In my opinion, that is probably why he is as successful as he is because of the belief he has. That is an important asset, to believe in yourself and your product.