Groupon: The Accidental Success

If you ever have been part of a start-up, you know that a successful business model sometimes just emerges in a way that was unforeseen in the original business plan. In Groupon's case, the successful model was something of a "Hail Mary" pass to save an original vision, an online fund-raising service, from collapse.

Groupon originally was founded as "The Point," an online fund-raising service that used the "tipping point" concept (donations had to reach a specified level before any of the donations were accepted). That now is the foundation for the group buying concept as well: offers aren't triggered unless there is a minimum take rate.

Groupon: the billion-dollar that company turned down Google