With all the implied hate against groupon, it's still a billion dollar company.

Almost any markrtplace start up can be cloned locally. But even more importantly, even before lyft and groupon existed there were small local shops executing on a similar idea. But it took Groupon to acheive scale.

What's next? You'll begin deriding McDonalds because all it is is a burger shop that anyone can start?

Scaling shit from $100,000 biz to 100mil revenue is hard as fuck. Exhibit A: all the groupon competitors that no longer exist.

Might want to think twice before cloning with the goal of an acquisition by the cloned. I remember you could throw a rock a couple of years ago and hit a dozen Groupon clones. I'd be curious to know any stats on what percentage of those actually did get acquired by Groupon - or indeed had any exit other than just folding.

Yeah I get it. But the thing is - that's one year less I spend on my idea.