Can't say I'm surprised by this.<p>I pass their fancy offices [1] all the time, but I'd have a hard time naming anyone who uses their deals regularly.<p>They've gone from expanding rapidly [2] to laying off heavily in 7 months.<p>It's a shame as they were often touted as a success story for tech [3] and business in general in the area.<p>1: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/living-social-office-tour-2012-8?op=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/living-social-office-tour-201...</a><p>2: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-business/post/livingsocial-gobbles-up-more-dc-office-spaceagain/2012/04/12/gIQAzBPqCT_blog.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-business/post/li...</a><p>3: Yes, I know tech is relatively small part of the daily deals business. I'm talking common perception.
I still wonder about the daily-deal business model. The premise that loss-leading discounts will spark increased retail-price customers is losing its believability. In my circle I've never heard a business referred to as "that place I found on Groupon" -- I've really only seen it used as a marketplace for deep discounts on one-time (or nearly one-time) purchases. A groupon for skydiving or a guided tour? It doesn't make any sense.<p>For the businesses fueling daily deals, the cost of customer acquisition skyrockets. For customers getting the deal, returning to the business to pay full price is hard to swallow. It's going to take some real business intelligence to turn these daily deal companies around.<p>That said, my heart goes out to the 400+ employees looking at lose their jobs before Christmas. That sucks, a lot.
During their hiring explosion, I had a hunch that I shouldn't have gone forward with an interview there. I think I made a good decision...<p>Something in my gut just said "who cares?" about the work. I couldn't get a straight answer on what I'd be building or why I should believe they would keep growing.
Does anybody else remember the articles about Tim O'Shaughnessy in entrepreneurship magazines?<p><a href="http://www.inc.com/magazine/201203/liz-welch/the-way-i-work-tim-o-shaugnessy-living-social.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.inc.com/magazine/201203/liz-welch/the-way-i-work-...</a><p>Stepping back a bit, I'm starting to see a pattern. One day, the magazines are like, "Bobby Clampit built Something2.0 out of his own golden shit with his bare. ALONE." Ten month later we have an announcement that reads "And, ah, Something2.0 announced 2,000 layoffs, whoops, the core co-founder team is releasing statements that..."
My guess is a large % of these laid off workers will be sales people in the disparate cities. Call center workers too.<p>LS seems to be going after small businesses but w/a different end goal than groupon, groupon looks like it wants to be the merchant provider for these companies, LS, not sure.
A percentage figure gives us a much better idea of what the scope of this layoff will be.<p><i>> LivingSocial, which has raised more than $800 million in funding, entered 2012 with a staff of roughly 5,000. The company’s most recent publicly disclosed headcount stands at “more than 4,500 employees,” according to its website.</i><p>So that's around 8-9% of its workforce.