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Ajit Jain’s business at Berkshire has become well known in the business world for being able and willing to insure risks that other insurance companies can’t handle. For example, Berkshire insured a billion-dollar contest once held by Pepsi

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GDP per capita more than quadrupled between 1941 and 2012. Warren Buffett – Letter To Shareholders 2012

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11 years

GDP per capita (Gross Domestic Product divided by number of people in the country) is the overall metric economists use to measure a country’s standard of living.

GDP per capita in the United States generally doubles about every 25 years in the US. This can be seen tangibly in the broad array of goods and services that we have available to us today that our parents and grandparents did not.

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received substantial dividends Warren Buffett – Letter To Shareholders 2012

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11 years

Many calculations of stock market investment performance fail to adjust for dividends and/or for inflation. This leads to tremendous confusion about actual performance of stocks over time.

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OK with having failed Andrew Mason – Groupon Farewell Memo

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11 years

This is probably the one disingenuous note in the entire letter. (Versus resignation letters from most other CEOs which would be 100% disingenuous.)

However, the underlying truth is that the creation and growth of the company under Andrew as CEO from inception through last year was a miracle of accomplishment.

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Seth Gold

11 years

ironic

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Seth Gold

11 years

coming from the man that built Netscape…

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11 years

Marc, the entire letter is disingenuous. Maybe it’s more genuine than typical corporate-speak put forth by CEOs of the last century–actually scratch that; it’s not more genuine; it’s just more humorous! …It’s clearly a cunningly planned strategy by Andrew FOR ANDREW to mask the fact that he’s laughing all the way to the bank and gave up once he made his money. Marc, I can’t believe you’re under his spell of charm.

My personal opinion is that when billions of dollars is at stake and has been invested, this much humor & swagger is out of line, and plain disrespectful–i.e. to all those that have and will lose money through Groupon, which may include you.

I’m sure you know better–I guess you used this as an opportunity to promote your latest investment, Rap Genius. I would have said nothing, because now you’re lying yourself by buying into Andrew’s lie.

Whatever, Whatever. Still love you, Marc. You. You created the game that’s giving so many of us opportunities to thrive. I can’t wait for the day when people can tell the truth in the spotlight. It’s going to take a fearless leader to set such an example; and this Andrew Mason is not.

ps. remember my name, you will meet me soon.

Marc, the entire letter is disingenuous. Maybe it's more genuine than typical corporate-speak put forth by CEOs of the last century--actually scratch that; it's not more genuine; it's just more humorous! ...It's clearly a cunningly planned strategy by Andrew FOR ANDREW to mask the fact that he's laughing all the way to the bank and gave up once he made his money. Marc, I can't believe you're under his spell of charm.

My personal opinion is that when billions of dollars is at stake and has been invested, this much humor & swagger is out of line, and plain disrespectful--i.e. to all those that have and will lose money through Groupon, which may include you.

I'm sure you know better--I guess you used this as an opportunity to promote your latest investment, Rap Genius. I would have said nothing, because now you're lying yourself by buying into Andrew's lie.

Whatever, Whatever. Still love you, Marc. You. You created the game that's giving so many of us opportunities to thrive. I can't wait for the day when people can tell the truth in the spotlight. It's going to take a fearless leader to set such an example; and this Andrew Mason is not.

ps. remember my name, you will meet me soon.

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11 years

Marc, one last thing: check my annotation under the “Just Kidding” link–I supply my analysis of this entire memo there.

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working together more effectively as a global company Andrew Mason – Groupon Farewell Memo

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11 years

At one point, Groupon was sort of two companies in one – the US operation that was built and run by a team of executives recruited by Andrew, and the international operation that resulted from an acquisition of a company founded by the famous Samwer brothers. The Samwers enjoyed broad autonomy to run the international operations largely separately from the US operations for several quarters.

In the last year, one of Andrew’s big challenges was to integrate the US and international operations into a single global business.

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rack

11 years

I would add that these Samwers brothers didn’t leave the company in very good shape and we’re known to be very bad setting up a good culture. I think this is a very important point since it’s one of the main reasons it’s taking so long in “integrating” the intl. operations as well as getting growth comparable to the US. Since intl used to be more than 50% of groupon’s revenue it explains a lot why the quarters estimates are so bad.

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controversial metrics in our S1 Andrew Mason – Groupon Farewell Memo

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11 years

Andrew is referring to the use of non-standard financial metrics in the company’s SEC filings, particularly in the IPO filing (S1).

As someone who was in the room as an observer at the Groupon board when the decision to use these metrics was made, I think Groupon was honestly trying to provide additional information that investors would find useful, which mirrored the way management thought about running the business.

However, no good deed goes unpunished, and widespread media paranoia about business metrics still lingering from the 2000 dot com crash combined with other missteps on Groupon’s part combined to make the use of those non-standard metrics highly controversial and ultimately negative for the company.

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11 years

Interesting insight.. perceptions change, hindsight is 20/20

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spend more time with my family Andrew Mason – Groupon Farewell Memo

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11 years

Over the last 20 years it has become customary in business for executives to claim to be “resigning to spend more time with my family” when they have actually been fired. It has become such a cliche that it is now a sort of running joke in corporate-speak.

(The additional subtext to the joke is that most executives are not liked by their families, who would prefer that they not spend more time at home and try to get them into a new job as quickly as possible.)

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Andreessen Horowitz Marc Andreessen – Why Andreessen Horowitz Is Investing in Rap Genius

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Author

11 years

Our venture capital firm, headquartered in Menlo Park, California. We fund companies that make software, mobile apps, wearable computing devices, games, 3D cameras, networking gear, and now rap communities.

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Integrate the suggestion into the annotation, keeping the contributor guidelines in mind.