Groupon Doomed by Too Much of a Good Thing
blogs.hbr.org/2011/08/groupon-doomed-by-too-much-of
From the page
Saved with the link. Notes from 2007 to 2016 are mostly the page's own words, so this is probably an excerpt.
But what is most interesting about its emphasis on the ACSOI metric is that, deep down, Groupon knows what we all know: good investments are profitable investments. It was simply not enough for the firm to report earnings and explain that it was investing for growth. Rather, Groupon felt the need to include a metric of profitability, no matter how contrived, that was actually positive.