I have to admire his honesty
He seems to have been a crap CEO running a joke of a business, but that resignation letter is the most honest admission of personal failings I've seen in a long time. I wonder what working for him was like.
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason has been handed his walking papers, to be replaced by executive chairman Eric Lefkofsky and vice chairman Ted Leonsis on an interim basis while the board looks for a new chief exec. The move comes less than 24 hours after the struggling daily-deals site announced yet another disappointing quarter, …
Really? All I can see is a fat "battletoad" that has sponged off investors with somthing that turned out to be a Really, really bad idea just around the 70's, and is ultimately walking off with a serious profit on his personal bank account.
I'd damn well be smiling and joking too..
We were talking about this the other day at work - what incentive is there in today's era of golden parachutes for CxO's to give a toss whether they succeed or fail? Paid if they do well, paid off with enough money to retire on if they don't, and no-one dare say a word against them in case it reflects badly on share prices. I'm honestly starting to suspect the likes of Gates and Ballmer know that they don't have a clue how to revitalise their cash cow businesses and don't care because they already have more money than they know what to do with.
He may be honest about how he his shortcomings in the role and how as CEO he saw he was getting in the way of the future of the company ..... but to give a positive spin on that surely he'd would need to be able to say "I realized all this and so I'm resigning" - instead it reads more like "despite all this I stayed on until other people noticed and fired me"
At least Groupon still has Eric Lefkofsky, "lets start having fun ... lets get funky ... lets announce everything ... lets be WILDLY positive in our forecasts ... lets take this thing to the extreme ... if we get wacked on the ride down – who gives a shit ... THE TIME TO GET RADICAL IS NOW ... WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE...,"
For anyone who has lived under a rock the last couple years: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/11/eric_lefkofsky_of_groupon/
Mason has definately succeeded. The article doesn't mention how much Mason walked away with but judging by his letter this is definately a happy camper.
He walks away with a large capital, a packet load of experience, an address book that probably couldn't be paid for and I can easilly imagine that he is already thinking about his next venture.