Groupon

Brett Krasnove

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

Fortune 500

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Groupon (GRPN): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Groupon (GRPN): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Brad, let's talk a little bit about leadership. You're the founder of Uptake. It's a little more than a year old, and it's growing. But you also have been the founder and director of many other companies that you've started, and you're still actively involved with them. So how can you be an effective leader with all of these enterprises? You need to focus, as a leader is, is the answer. The fact that I have, involvement at the board level of a number of companies I think makes me a better CEO, because I have the ability to sort of jump in and out of a lot of different stories and Understand patterns, but my focus is on Uptake. What is your leadership style as a CEO? At age 46, my leadership style is still a work in process. But if you came to Uptake tomorrow and watched all day, what you'd see See as quick, clear decision making. What you'd see is a very explicit acceptance of trying and failing versus a, hey get it right. Let's not **** it up. I wanna keep velocity moving, and I think you'd find values, curiosity, you'd find these things that are not just random words, but I mean, we have philosophy classes for our company. About what? About the philosophy of life. Now, you don't have to go if you don't want to, but you'd be amazed how many people that uptake, take philosophy as [ UNKNOWN ] that we offer. Because, you should be curious, you should want to find, what's, what's your purpose beyond coming to work? Who are you? Because, if you're a better person, We are a better company. Many people say that Silicon Valley is the go- to place if you wanna find talented entrepreneurs and you wanna know about the next new thing. You bucked that trend and you started Uptake in Chicago. Tell us why. We started Uptake in Chicago, number one, because that's our home. Number two because specifically for Uptake and our collaborative disruption model in. The industrial internet. This is an asset to be in the manufacturing heart land of this great country. The relationships that we have with iconic leaders in these globally relevant industries are uniquely powered and empowered by this midwest based team that we've built. So I think that In the case of uptake really, exquisitely, being in Chicago is a huge asset. And Brad I'm sure along the way you've gotten some advice about how to run a company. Tell us what has been the best advice you've gotten on the subject of leadership. Best advice is from Sam Zell who's been a mentor to me for 25 years, an extraordinary relationship, and the advice is very clear. Great leaders, great entrepreneurs, understand how to balance risk and reward, get emotion and all the other polluting biases out of the way. So they understand risk, they evaluate the right reward, clearly they make a decision whether the risk will be paid for by the Possible reward then they hustle like hell to make sure they get that reward with all their resources. That is great advice. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Do Philosophy Classes Help a Company Prosper?

Tech

Brad Uptake is now considered a unicorn. It's valued at a billion dollars or more. How important was it for you for Uptake to get this unicorn status? We're obviously running a business for profit. And so we are obviously at some level marked and focused on creating an enterprise that is valuable. That has purpose and meaning on a global level. But, that being said, really my focus every day is on creating a software platform that delivers really valuable insight to end customers and everything takes care of itself if you do that well. You know, some venture capitalists say that many companies have to become a unicorn and to increase their valuation could be unhealthy. That the founders get distracted from the main focus of the business. What are your thoughts on that? << My thought is that if you meet an entrepreneur that has an idea and has launched a business and that entrepreneur is not focused on building a business of extraordinary value You should question that entrepreneur and why it is they started that business. So the obsession, if you will, that you're talking about of a certain valuation is just capitalism. So entrepreneurs are supposed to be going after big ideas. The question is how many entrepreneurs really have big ideas that are worthy of going after. That to me is a question worth asking. Do you wanna take Uptake public one day? How important is an IPO for you? The important thing is about building an exceptional purposeful, meaningful, globally important company. Really, that's the focus. So any sorta step along the way is not even remotely on my mind. I'm focus on Uptake. How do you know when the time is right to go public? Well, there is no necessarily perfect or right time for any sort of financing event. So, I've been part of taking companies public, and my response in regards to uptake is the absolute total focus As I'm building an extraordinary globally important company, and that is what we are doing. So what is your advice to entrepreneurs and founders who want to take their company public? What's the key to a successful IPO and getting it right. The key to a successful IPO is having an underlying company that is delivering value. And I, there's a lot of other noise that gets in the way of whether an IPO is successful or not, including macroeconomic events. My advice for every company is to build a foundation that can withstand or sustain your vision. For the long haul. And that gets measured by value. What value are you creating and how sustainable is that value.

Is Attaining Unicorn Status a Distraction for Companies?

Brad, your company is part of this whole new trade of the industrial internet of things. But many people don't much about uptake. So in a few words, tell us exactly what do you do? We work in major industries and we take data off of sensors in those industries and we deliver to the end customers that, companies that are in those industries, we deliver them answers. Answers around optimizing the operations of their companies through finding data patterns that would help them perhaps run a locomotive faster, or perhaps operate an oil rig smarter. So optimization. Minimizing or eliminating unplanned failure. So that a train doesn't break down in the middle of the desert. So they can service it before it breaks and we're in industries like locomotive, energy, oil and gas, mining, construction and more. And one of your biggest customers is Caterpillar, with all of those big, earth moving equipment that they have all around the world. You are helping them to become Have more insight and more efficient, and you also helping them from being disruptive. Right? Look, Clayton Christenson talks about the innovators dilemma, I talk about the industrialist dilemma. And that dilemma is you have to go to that next level of value for your clients beyond machinery and servicing machinery, you've gotta deliver your clients value. And the answer's yes. We are collaborating with Caterpillar and with other partners in other industries to together win that race. So Uptake is now about two years old. You have 350 employees so you are growing. What's your timetable for profits? We are profitable. Congratulations. Thank you. This is really, I have been a part of building a number of businesses in the last 25 years. I'll tell you that Uptake is extraordinary. I would say that it is rare that a company this young is profitable. If anything, I think it speaks to opportunity that we have created through this collaborative disruption model and also the The quality of the team we built, and the ability we have to deliver valuable product, valuable software. As you probably have heard, there are a number of economists who are talking about a recession coming to the US for this year. If that happens, what does that mean for a company like Uptake? This is a company that's not dependent on any certain economic environment, so is there always going to be value for the global rail and locomotives base to operate better? Yes. Is there value for the global construction industry in a macro sense to operate more efficiently and save money, and be smarter about Of voting equipment breaking in the middle of a job, yes. So we're in a space where there is value to be created and delivered irregardless of a given cycle. So that's part of the opportunity for Caterpillar and us is that while heavy equipment might have cycles. Delivering predictive insight based value to customers is something that is always interesting to those customers. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How This Company Is Saving Industrial Giants From Disruption

This Company Is Saving Industrial Giants From Disruption

Groupon has announced new financial engineering tactics with hopes that they will please investors. Erin is it a smart move? It's an interesting move, I don't know if it's a smart one. I mean, so, so look at what they are doing, Groupon has a Korean subsidiary called Ticket Monster. They're selling a majority stake in that to some private equity firms for about. Sixty million dollars. Now using some of that money to do share buyback programs. So that's really interesting because usually share buybacks that's the kind of thing that mature companies that maybe aren't growing a lot they still have lots of cash flow they could do that to keep investors happy. Groupon is a young company. They're a tech company that's, you know should be growing quickly. They should have shareholders excited in their vision of. Of all the expansion opportunities that they have, but instead they're just giving them money, which almost, kind of, sounds like they're just giving up on the idea of a fast growing visionary company. Exactly, and vision has been, you know, my greatest concern about Groupon. I'm. I mean, look, t -, to their credit, they're investment in Ticket Monster showed that they were looking at opportunity beyond their home market. I like that, but what I don't like is the fact that- >>Well now they're giving up on it. Right. Exactly. What I don't like is that the daily deals thing is kind of over and everybody's asking what is Groupon. Stand for? What does this company do? You know, I have a lot of questions about that, and everybody else does to, I'm sure. [ LAUGH ] That's the whole problem with them. They're. Daily Deals is kind of flat or, you know, not growing at all. And their fastest growing business division is just Groupon selling stuff directly. It's just regular old commerce, maybe at a discount or something. It's not. Clever. It doesn't have some kind of like, unique twist on it. And so they're basically just competing against Amazon. They're just selling everyday goods. And that's the fastest growing thing, but it's also the lowest margin. And so why would a shareholder want to buy stock in Groupon when Amazon is going to obviously outcompete them on price? Well, absolutely. You can't ignore Amazon. But at the same time, hey, this. Is actually still a lucrative business. I mean, Groupon is a $ 5 billion company. They're probably going to make a few billion this year in revenue. At the same time I'd knock that. I'm thinking, you know, maybe they're a little undervalued for what they actually do. This is true. But you look at their stock performance over years, Groupon has been kind of languishing around that $ 5, $ 6 billion valuation for a while. So shareholders. Haven't really seen anything they want to get excited about. Maybe this is the thing that will finally get people interested in buying Groupon stock again. Fair point. For one show that's always a deal, come to fortune. com for more Tech Debate.

The company divested in their Korean subsidiary Ticket Monster. Fortune's Andrew Nusca and Erin Griffith examine whether this decision will please stockholders.

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