Groupon Chairman Eric Lefkofsky Breaks Silence on Recent “Potholes”

This article has been updated and edited to remove a metaphor about chairman Eric Lefkosky's opinion of Andrew Mason as CEO.

Eric Lefkosky recently spoke before a Northbrook Chamber of Commerce audience about the merits of failure, and it's nearly impossible not to draw arrows right to Groupon from his comments, so let's get to it:

"Our main focus is trying to figure out how this model evolves and consistently falling on our face in the public," said Lefkosky. "It's like giving a 7-year-old a Ferrari; you're going to get a certain amount of chaos."

Continuing the sports-car metaphor, he then said: "I can only learn by doing something and failing. You can't tell me to avoid a pothole; I have to drive it."

Northbrook Patch has much, much more from this interesting talk Lefkosky gave.

Meanwhile, Groupon is still continuing to roll out new services in the midst of all this chaos. Wednesday morning, the company announced the G-Pass, which is "a new feature allowing GrouponLive customers to bypass the box office line and head straight for the entrance."

It's good for certain music, sports and other live events.

Groupon's stock continues to fall; as of press time it's at $13.08. It's the sound of many, many potholes being driven over. Here's hoping it'll be able to correct before it's too late. 

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as an interviewer-writer for Adult Swim, he's also a columnist for EGM. He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. When not playing video games for work he's thinking of dashing out to Chicago Diner, Pizano's, or Yummy Yummy. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

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