Disqus - Latest Comments for JimMoran

Re: Yext Infographic: 64% of Foursquare Listings Have Missing or Incorrect Info

Jim Moran — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:38:02 -0000

Not to mention 4sq accuracy isn't a checkin-weighted average figure. I bet popular bars & restaurants have a much higher completeness % than, say, general contractors, which are rarely accessed by 4sq users. From a weighted average perspective, I bet they are best in class.

Re: How to Add Django Database Caching in 5 Minutes

Jim Moran — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:19:31 -0000

Fixed.

Re: Filter Your Deals With The Yipit iPhone App

Jim Moran — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:54:42 -0000

Thanks a lot for taking a look. Agree with pretty much everything you said, and it's underway.

One note on the city issue - the selector is indeed just for metros, but if you add in your address, then we'll know where you are exactly to the lat and log, even in a surrounding suburb. You can add in your zip just to be sure.

Working on making that interface more clear, but wanted to ship v1 as soon as possible.

Re: The Bad Deal’s Big Beef With Yipit

Jim Moran — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:50:20 -0000

Did a quick scan and more than 90% of our trending deals are for small, local businesses - not national chains.

Johnny Rockets is an exception, and a tricky one to handle:
- on one hand, I also don't like Johnny Rockets and don't need a website to tell me 'it's popular'
- on the other hand, the deal actually is popular: it's selling more than 5X above average (on Groupon, not because of us), and absent other info, we should probably let our users know about it. It's hard to make normative judgements just because the business is a chain.

We do need to add reviews, ratings, etc to better inform purchase decision. We can also potentially take into account attributes like 'chain,' 'fast-food,' etc.

In general trending has been an awesome feature: it's surfaced some popular deals that Yipit users would have otherwise missed, often from niche deal sites that often go under represented due to their inability to source as many offers.

Overall, I totally agree with you that our mission should be to help users make the best decision, not 'sell' them offers. "Trending" makes you aware of offers that are blowing up in your city, but the site needs to go the extra mile and incorporate more data points around businesses to make it easier for users to make better informed decisions. We'll get there.

Re: Groupon S-1 Reveals Business Model Deteriorating in Oldest Markets

Jim Moran — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 13:48:55 -0000

All the charts are driven from data in the S-1

Re: Dead Heat: Groupon Down Another 32% in March, LivingSocial Ties It Up

Jim Moran — Sun, 08 May 2011 21:38:26 -0000

Gross. You're right, doesn't fully represent actual profitability.

Re: Dead Heat: Groupon Down Another 32% in March, LivingSocial Ties It Up

Jim Moran — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:48:58 -0000

Hi Michael,

I just ran a report and the mean gross revenue of all deals ending yesterday from Groupon was $17,231. That's likely higher than average since those deals ran all weekend.

You can also eyeball it by taking a look at Yipit towards the end of the day. Happy to share more data too if you have specific questions.

Note that we're only tracking the top 30 metros on Yipit currently, and it's possible that smaller, newer markets have a lower revenue per deal.

Jim

Re: Dead Heat: Groupon Down Another 32% in March, LivingSocial Ties It Up

Jim Moran — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:43:23 -0000

Those were February numbers (and not in the top 20 metros).

Re: Dead Heat: Groupon Down Another 32% in March, LivingSocial Ties It Up

Jim Moran — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 06:58:16 -0000

Agree with that. LivingSocial Escapes seems to be performing well. I've even seen the same local offfer run under the standard and Escapes brands simultaneously (spas, etc)

Re: Is Groupon Stores Dead On Arrival?

Jim Moran — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:00:53 -0000

Totally agree. Email capture / CRM / customer conversion is a key service that should be provided to merchants. Wrote a post that spoke to the merchant services opportunity generally: http://blog.yipit.com/2010/...

Re: Is Groupon Stores Dead On Arrival?

Jim Moran — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 12:36:52 -0000

Thank you. This is fascinating stuff and certainly has big implications for the daily deal space and local in general. I need to think more about it.

Re: Is Groupon Stores Dead On Arrival?

Jim Moran — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 12:35:15 -0000

The existing/new percentages are nearly impossible to estimate. My thinking was that non-promoted deals would be bought mainly by the current customers, since those are the people who follow the business and the deal is not promoted through the Groupon newsletter. Promoted deals would have a higher percentage of new customers, however, since the personalization/targeting of these deals would likely go into relevant demos in their own geography, there is a good chance that many are current customers still.

I read somewhere that a base case assumption is that 20% of customers who purchase a daily deal are already customers of that business, so I upped the percentage for the "Promoted" deals, as I assumed a tighter promotion.

Still, this is a pretty loose assumption. I would add, however, that I delineate between "current customer" and "customer who would go anyway," elsewhere in the model, where I try to add another conservative assumption.

I assumed zero breakage revenue to the merchant because Groupon keeps the breakage as part of the contract: http://blog.yipit.com/2010/...

Re: Is Groupon Stores Dead On Arrival?

Jim Moran — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 18:35:18 -0000

Thanks for pointing that out. We just added pagination as a result, let me know if you run into any issues.

Re: Daily Deal Success is All About New Customers

Jim Moran — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:57:31 -0000

That's totally right. Most Daily Deals are able to be used at the consumers leisure, for up to a year, so they're not really about moving expiring inventory. Nets tickets has a different value proposition.

Re: Is Groupon Stores Dead On Arrival?

Jim Moran — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:34:27 -0000

1. Merchants don't receive customer contact information. In rare cases, the redemption process may require customers to re-enter contact info to claim (e.g., magazine subscription deals).

2. Not certain, though doubtful that they are currently providing this level of detail.

3. I haven't seen any, though agree they have a treasure trove of data. Separately, it's likely you will see branded Daily Deal credit cards in 2011.

Re: Daily Deal Success is All About New Customers

Jim Moran — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:04:29 -0000

I did. Most of the assumptions came from surveys we conducted of more than a hundred small businesses that actually ran these deals. They reported those numbers to us.

Re: Daily Deal Profile: The Big Deal by Angie’s List

Jim Moran — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:25:44 -0000

You could still comp out the estimate, but that's a good point I'd never thought of.

Re: Did Regulatory Risk Derail Google-Groupon?

Jim Moran — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:00:48 -0000

I love it.

Re: Yipit Nation Rolls Up National Daily Deals

Jim Moran — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:59:54 -0000

They're not running national deals yet, but we have them loaded up in their corresponding cities.

Re: Talent Agency for Engineers and Product Managers?

Jim Moran — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:25:02 -0000

I imagine a boon for agency-based matchmaking is the extent to which talent can be placed many times over a career. Agents undergo serious fixed costs in establishing relationships, which will be monetized over many placements. Creative talent is perfect for this, as most placements are project based: films, shows, commercials, etc.

Business talent traditionally doesn't have that attribute, as executives change jobs only a few times in their career.

But for startups, being more project based their, their talent (engineers) may justify the agency model.

Re: Groupon Releases Pricing For Self-Serve Product

Jim Moran — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:21:32 -0000

Great catch, I hadn't seen their TOS. Martin Tobias (Tippr CEO), wrote an interesting post a while back about Groupon's lockup: http://www.deepgreencrystal...

Re: Groupon Reveals Its Future Lies In Self-Serve

Jim Moran — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 13:26:05 -0000

It appears that Groupon is providing a "guarantee" of sorts for each deal, not to mention some credit card / merchant services for these offers. So I would assume there is some variable pricing.

I also envision that merchants will be able to opt for more traffic on their offers, in other words, plug their offer into the Groupon email ecosystem.

Re: Groupon Reveals Its Future Lies In Self-Serve

Jim Moran — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 13:22:24 -0000

I agree. Btw, Groupon also provides a bunch of services to merchants that most people don't know about: http://www.grouponworks.com...

Re: http://treyblog.tumblr.com/post/1323129325

Jim Moran — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:38:10 -0000

I think they fixed it?

Re: Being The Glue

Jim Moran — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:31:41 -0000

I like this, reminds me of "The Goal:" no local optimums