I think Groupon is a slightly different case to Herbalife. Herbalife had/has a pretty substantial pyramid scheme component to it.<p>Groupon, IMO was a trend. Trends have a ballistic trajectory. The reports of hard selling and unhappy customers confuse the issue, but I think the heart of the problem was that Groupon was popular for a while and now it's less popular.<p>Our default business systems don't know how to deal with that kind of a thing. A company with a 2 year half life. All our financial systems and our valuation of companies are built around companies that are lang lived, practically immortal (in the sense that impacts net present value). But, not everything is like that. A film or a computer game is often produced by a firm that forms and the disbands to create a single thing. It has all the things a normal company has: employees (including some highly paid stars), investors, assets, liabilities, etc. It only exists for a short time.<p>Crocs was like that too. A product that made a splash, sold a lot of brightly colored shoes at a great margin and then contracted.<p>I think the problem with Groupon wasn't Groupon. The problem was the whole system trying to treat it like Strabucks when it was more like Star Wars. Star Wars wasn't a failure because it stopped making money.. ..wait. Bad example. Exceptions prove the rule.<p>Financially, a company is the NPV of all its future cash flows. In practice, the system assumes those cash flows will continue steadily forever, growing if the company is healthy. If they try to swallow a company that will exist for just 4, they choke.<p>I think we need to be on the lookout for things like this. The world is getting fast paced. Maybe we need to be able to deal with 4 year companies.