TWiST May 14: Andrew Mason of Groupon

Watch us LIVE at 1pm PDT on Friday, May 14th on http://thisweekin.com or here.

Jason's guest this week will be Andrew Mason, CEO and Founder of Groupon, a site that features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in a variety of cities across the United States, Canada, and soon beyond.  Prior to Groupon Andrew, founded The Point a website launched in November 2007 that lets you start a campaign asking people to give money or do something as a group.  An interesting point that Jason has mentioned in the past is where you start isn't where you end up and case in point the platform of The Point help build Groupon.

I'm going to quote from his about page just because I found his bio pretty interesting and couldn't do it justice without plagiarizing.

Andrew's mostly unremarkable existence began in Pittsburgh, PA; he moved to Chicago in 1999 to attend Northwestern University, where he lives today with his girlfriend and over 20 cats. Andrew graduated with a degree in music, the uselessness of which served as a chief inspiration to not be useless. Out of college, Andrew became a software developer by no ambition of his own, but via a series of acquaintances offering to give him money to do incrementally harder stuff on computers. Excited by the power of technology to change the world, Andrew developed Policy Tree, a policy debate visualization tool, and won a scholarship to attend the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy in 2006. In school for only 3 months, the flighty Andrew dropped out after receiving an unexpected offer to fund the idea that would become The Point. The Point, a ground-breaking approach to online collective action and fundraising, launched in November 2007. One year later, Andrew founded Groupon, leveraging the collective buying technology of The Point to make it easier (and cheaper) to experience all the great stuff in Chicago. At various points in his life, Andrew has also started businesses to deliver bagels as if they were newspapers, and sell muffins with cranberries that he found in his backyard to people living on his street.

Did I disappoint?  It is an interesting bio and I suspect will be an interesting interview.  From the outside looking in, and not knowing Andrew, he seems like a great example of what can be done in a few short years.

When: May 14th 1pm PST / 4pm EST