Groupon's Biggest Deal Ever by Frank Sennett book signing

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.