Frank
Sennett will be at After-Words books on June 14, 2012 at 7 p.m. reading from and answering questions about his book Groupon's
Biggest Deal Ever: The Inside Story of How One Insane Gamble, Tons of
Unbelievable Hype, and Millions of Wild Deals Made Billions for One Ballsy
Joker (St. Martin’s Press/ Hardcover/
June 2012/ ISBN 978-1250000842 $25.99). Wine reception following.
In late 2010, Groupon completely lost its mind. Rather than
take Google’s unheard-of $6 billion buyout offer, founder Andrew Mason turned
the search giant down and decided to go it alone. The experts laughed at
Mason’s audacious gamble. Groupon was little more than two years old at the
time and staffed from top to bottom with inexperienced twenty-somethings. There was no way they would ever be able to
recoup that kind of money.
Well who’s laughing now?
An online discount service that offers a deal a day at local merchants
in cities in more than forty-three countries, Groupon recently had the largest
IPO by any Internet company since Google in 2004 and is currently the
fastest-growing company in Internet history. Committed to innovating a new
model for commerce, Groupon is renowned for an unorthodox office culture and
editorial voice based on radical transparency and absurd humor.
Time Out Chicago Editor in
Chief and author Frank Sennett has unprecedented access to Groupon and its
executives including CEO Andrew Mason. His new book, Groupon's Biggest Deal Ever is the exclusive and unparalleled
account of the incredible rise of discount giant Groupon and the compelling
story of its offbeat founder Andrew Mason as he created a juggernaut of online
commerce and ignited a consumer revolution.
FRANK
SENNETT is the editor-in-chief and president of Time Out Chicago. He edited the
first story ever published about Groupon and later wrote a Time Out cover story
on the company that led to this book project. In the 17 months he spent
reporting on the company, Frank was the only journalist with inside access to
Groupon's top leaders during the SEC quiet period before the company went
public; became the first and only reporter to get a full account of Groupon's
sale negotiations with Google and Yahoo. He conducted the only joint interview
founders Andrew Mason and Eric Lefkofsky ever gave recounting the company's
first years and was the only reporter on the floor of the NASDAQ MarketSite on
the day of Groupon's IPO. Frank is a graduate of Northwestern University’s
Medill School of Journalism, earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and has published seven previous
books in the past decade.
