Mr. Andrew Mason

He grew up in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh and graduated from Mt. Lebanon High School in 1999. He graduated from Northwestern University in 2003 with a degree in music. At age 15, he started a Saturday morning delivery service called Bagel Express. After graduating from Northwestern University, he worked in web design for Chicago entrepreneur Eric Lefkofsky. He stopped working with Lefkofsky to attend the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy on a scholarship. However, he dropped out of his Master?s degree program only 3 months after it started. He also interned and worked at prominent Chicago recording studio Electrical Audio under recording engineer Steve Albini, whom he cited as being an inspiration on his work ethic. Several years later Lefkofsky provided him with one million dollars in "seed money" to bankroll his first entrepreneurial venture on the Internet, The Point, which is now a largely inactive web platform. The Point eventually led to the idea to develop Groupon. Groupon is a website that sells deals to local businesses and has partnered social networking with bargain hunting. The website states that since its beginning in November 2008, Groupon has sold more than six million deals. With Groupon taking 50 percent of every deal, plus a small credit-card handling fee, its revenue was expected to top $350 million by the end of 2010. In late 2010 it was reported by Mashable that Groupon's annual revenue was $800 million. Many internet sites have now sought to recreate Groupon's business example for their own niches. On December 1, 2010, The New York Times reported that Groupon was the subject of a $6 billion dollar acquisition bid from Google, which Groupon turned down.