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Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Groupon’s Explosive Growth Continues … As Do Its Losses

Posted in Business, Technology, tagged , , on August 11, 2011 | 7 Comments »

Daily deal leader Groupon continues to grow its revenues at a jaw-dropping pace. According to its updated S-1 filing, the company sold $878 million in Groupons in the second quarter, ten times more than a year earlier: However, costs have been exploding too. Groupon spent almost $1 billion in Q2: Put it all together, and Groupon has been losing [...]

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Groupon’s Explosive Growth

Posted in Business, Technology, tagged , , on June 2, 2011 | 3 Comments »

We’ve all heard the rumors that Groupon is the fastest growing company ever. Today it finally opened its books in its preliminary filing to go public. Wow. In the first quarter of 2009, the online deal company mustered only a quarter of million in revenue. In the first quarter of 2011, it brought in almost $650 million. Wow. Only [...]

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Thanksgiving Reading

Posted in Business, Microeconomics, Nature, Politics, Technology, tagged , , , , on November 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

So many fascinating economic issues, so little time to blog. Here are some of the fun items that I would have discussed in recent days if I had infinite time: How OpenTable uses its market power. Over at Incanto, Mark Pastore describes how OpenTable uses its dominant position in online restaurant reservations to get as much [...]

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Netflix Avoids the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Posted in Business, Internet, Technology, tagged , , on September 28, 2009 | 5 Comments »

The highlight of this month’s Wired magazine is a profile of Netflix and its CEO, Reed Hastings. The theme is Netflix’s strategy to thrive even as their business model changes (e.g., as on-line streaming replaces DVDs by mail). The opening paragraphs document an impressive willingness to change course: It had taken the better part of [...]

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Netflix Boosts Prize Economics

Posted in Business, Internet, Teaching, Technology, tagged , on September 22, 2009 | 1 Comment »

By at least one metric – the number of people who have mentioned it to me – my brief post about Netflix appears to be my most popular one so far. The post linked to a remarkable slide deck about the corporate culture that Netflix has embraced in its quest for excellence. Most memorable line: [...]

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The Rubber Room

Posted in Business, Politics, tagged , , , on August 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Over in the New Yorker, Steven Brill discusses “the battle over New York City’s worst teachers“: These fifteen teachers, along with about six hundred others in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city’s five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a [...]

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Craigslist’s Business Model

Posted in Business, Internet, Technology, tagged , , , , on August 26, 2009 | 3 Comments »

The magazine Wired regularly publishes some of the most interesting articles about economics and the modern world. Last month, for example, they had a great article about the antitrust threats looming over Google. The month before, it covered the economics of Somali pirates, which I never found time to write about. And the month before that, [...]

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Big Salaries at Netflix

Posted in Business, tagged , , on August 6, 2009 | 10 Comments »

The slide deck describing the culture at Netflix has some real gems (ht kottke.org). For example, here are three elements of the company’s compensation practices: Unlike many companies, we practice “adequate performance gets a generous severance package.” (slide 26) Netflix vacation policy and tracking: “there is no policy or tracking” (“There is also no clothing [...]

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