Andrew Mason Quotes

Groupon has some interesting assets.

Groupon, as you probably are by now aware, is exactly what it sounds like: a daily-deal site offering group discounts. Maybe you've seen that done before, but certainly not like Groupon, which has executed with an energetic sales force and engaging copywriters, many culled from the Chicago comedy scene.

We realized we had high-volume marketplace as a platform. Anyone can come in and buy with a subscription.

There's no special technological wizardry involved in what Groupon does.

There are lots of things about Amazon for which they deserve credit. They're innovative. There are lots of very, very happy Amazon customers. I'm not here to dispute that Amazon has been personally good for me or to say that they haven't been, so far, good to their customers.

For many years, we have repeated that the direct-to-consumer channel is growing and capturing a larger share of our customers' wallet.

It seems preposterous now, but Amazon began as a bookstore.

Great businesses can be built on scale. I think Amazon has built a phenomenal commerce business largely on scale. Their network effect isn't obvious to me, but boy, have they used scale effectively.

Well all the big companies are really panicked by the internet thing and all that, and sales went down, although sales have gone up again in this country a bit and also the big companies, because they're so big, they need big sales really so they're not really interested.

Is there anyone out there who is the next Steve Jobs? I think Jeff Bezos is pretty close. He is very smart. He is extremely creative. He has completely reinvented the way in which commerce is done online.

Amazon thrived because it implemented the online bookstore idea better than any of its early rivals did, not because it was the only company to have the idea or the first company to have the idea. It continues to grow only because it keeps trying to improve on the details of the idea and the way it puts it into practise.

You can't create a mass market if you don't have a common standard.

When we look at investing, we always think about 'how defensible is this, how likely is it that somebody is going to copy this.' E-commerce tends to be something easy to copy because it's execution.

The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

Groupon is a great concept packaged in a superb name, but the concept of group discounts is not new.

In the early days of eBay, I articulated for the very first time this belief that people are basically good.

I want to make something commercial that people can pick up on.

E-commerce is applicable to Russia, just as it's applicable to any other market.

eBay's business is based on enabling someone to do business with another person, and to do that, they first have to develop some measure of trust, either in the other person or the system.

We don't believe the market can be dominated by one company in e-commerce in China - namely Alibaba. The Chinese market is very wide and deep, with a huge population.

There is a clear goal and it isn't to make money. The goal is to desperately try to make the best products we can. We are not naive - if you trust it, people like it, they buy it and we make money. This is a consequence.

Sydney is a very good market for us - we have a very strong following here.

There are lots of retailers that are now scrambling to emulate the Amazon model, so Amazon does not have a monopoly on same-day distribution or broad selection or low prices. All that said, there are advantages that accrue to the largest player, so I don't see much in the way of Amazon slowing down.

One of the Internet's highest-profile companies, Priceline once dreamed of transforming the way consumer goods are bought and sold by offering customers the chance to 'name your own price' for a variety of products, including airline tickets.

Sales don't always have anything to do with good or brilliant or original. Sales are about appeal.