Today I built an amazing tool that allows you to track Groupon's gross revenue by city, in real time. Wow, right?! As incredible as this may sounds, it took me less than 30 minutes and I used Google Docs. Yes, a Google Docs spreadsheet to be precise. Ok, arguably it only tracks five London areas, but hey..I've never coded before in my life (although I have quite an extensive experience with spreadsheets)!

You might see a couple of weird looking formulas in there, like =importxml[ etc. but don't get scared, even my grandma could do it! How? Get on AppSumo, a daily deal site for startuppers (and the only daily deal site I am still subscribed to!) that is currently featuring a free deal about the secrets behind Google Docs: Google Docs Unleashed, check it out, it's free!  

The short story is, Google spreadsheet can automatically pull information from other sites by importing xml feeds. This can be pretty useful to track competitors pricing for example, or in this case to track Groupon daily revenues. Pretty sweet isn't it? 

Here is the link if the embedding is not working: http://bit.ly/lsIAMK

So how does it work?

A: Groupons sold =importxml($B$9&B2,"//div[@class='soldAmount']")

B: Price per groupon =importxml($B$9&B2,"//span[@class='noWrap']") 

• $B$9 is the fixed part of the URL (i.e. http://www.groupon.co.uk/deals/) and 
• B2 is the variable part (i.e. north-london). the "&" simply combines the fixed and the variable parts.
• 'soldAmount' is effectively what identifies the number of groupons sold in the HTML of the page  
• 'noWrap' is what identifies the price of the groupon in the HTML of the page

C: Gross revenue = A x B

It would have been interesting to track every single city in the UK, but the issue with Google docs is that it only lets you use up to 50 import functions, so I limited it to London. With more time, one could build separate spreadhsheets and literally track global Groupon revenues in real-time! I bet this could be a pretty useful tool for traders when Groupon will be a listed company: one could effectively know Groupon's gross revenue before they release their quarterly results! ;)

Thanks Paul Hontz & Tom Critchlow!

I just read about Walgreens acquisition of Drugstore.com for over $400mm. Wow.Traditional retailers are really feeling left behind in the race to online...this is happening more and more often. Not too long ago Morrisons, the UK supermarket group, acquired Kiddicare and snapped up a minority stake in FreshDirect, the US online groceries retailer. While this is a natural move for companies that have traditionally operated in the offline world (and do not have a clue about online), it is also driving valuations of eCommerce businesses through the roof, literally.

These are some multiples I have calculated based on public info:

• Drugstore.com, at $409mm enterprise value, is being valued by Walgreens at 25x 2010 EBITDA and 22x 2011 projected EBITDA
• Kiddicare, at £70mm, was valued by Morrisons at well over 20x 2010 EBITDA
• ASOS trades at over 30x 2011 forecast EBITDA!
• Ocado trades at 30x 2011 forecast EBITDA

I would love to see a chart of eCommerce multiples pre dotcom crash..I bet they were not that far away from what we are seeing in the market these days (if you have a source, please send me the link!). 

UPDATE: some useful data on Ben Horowitz's blog, which compares multiples now vs. the dotcom bubble. The answer is: we are not in a bubble! yet.

I recently came across a very interesting presentation about social ecommerce called "The Social Shopping Explosion", by Immediate Future. One of the main point of the slides was about how social is changing our online purchase behaviour and how brands are reacting to it.

Think about it, go back a few years (say five). Back then, when you needed a new pair of shoes (and you were just a bit online savvy) your typical journey would have probably looked like this: 

Will Google succeed in its social move? I am long Facebook and short Google...

Here is me giving a little interview about Likebees at Minibar (didn't realise I was swinging that much!). 

The event was sponsored by Paypal X: Likebees was one of the guest speakers because it is currently adopting one of Paypal new Adaptive Payments API (the pre-approval API) to process payments. The API allows us not to charge customers until the 'tipping point' for the deal is reached, quite a scalable solution given our business model; we would in fact have to cancel each transaction manually if we used Paypal Standard. 

Matt from Bitzesty, who developed the web application, was also caught by the cameras during the night.

With some degree of pride and contempt I found out this morning that someone, somewhere, is looking for a freelancer on Elance to copy my website.

There are already about 30 bids placed, so I will provide an update as soon as the clone is live!

During my exchange programme at Babson College in the fall of 2005 I interviewed Eran Egozy, at the time CTO of Harmonix Music , as part of an assignment of the Entrepreneurship and New Ventures class.

In October 2009, four years later, I bumped into Fortune's 40 Under 40, the list of the 40 raising stars of the business scene that are under 40 years of age.

Number 24 of the list was...Eran Egozy, with his co-founder Alex Rigopulos! It seems like they have done pretty well for themselves since I interviewed them in October 2005...If you ever wondered who conceived Guitar Hero, well, it's these two guys.

This is the summary of my interview with Eran.

Interview to Eran Egozy (Harmonix Music) - 5 October 2005

I have been living in London for almost four years now, as a student, as a City boy and more recently as an entrepreneur. While four is nowhere near the 21+ years I've spent in Italy, I've had enough time to understand one thing that is so different about the way business relationships are nourished in the two countries.

This could be a very broad topic and require deeper degrees of analysis, but I will not go into that. The point I want to make here is simple: people here are just so much keener to share ideas, connections, tips, recommendations, etc. There's a natural inclination to help each other out, to keep crediting a virtual 'favour account' with no expectations of earning interests off it. It's very much like an ecosystem.   

In Italy, things work differently on this front. People expect to be compensated for favours, it is rare to find someone willing to move a finger for free. Business ideas are kept secret and connections are hardly shared because they would benefit the other party, whose success would ultimately be seen with a pinch of resentment.

Given Meetups are the ultimate arenas of networking and sharing, I've looked at the number of Meetup Groups registered in Milan and London. Numbers speak for themselves: there are 20 meetups in London for every meetup in Milan, although Milan is only roughly one fifth of the size of London.

It's not my purpose to add to the Italian stereotype here, this is just one of the lessons I've learned over my time here. So, if I ever had the chance to bring something back to Italy, it would be this cooperative attitude: the benefits of sharing by far out-weight the risks.

I was recently mentioned in an article by Enzo Riboni on the Italian national newspaper Corriere della Sera along with my new startup Likebees. Here is the English translation for those who do not speak Italiano..

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Goodbye investment banks, here comes the start-up. Yannick dives into e-commerce

Can you give up a promising career abroad and a salary which, for a young man of 25, is mostly unthinkable? Well, this is what Yannick Roux did a few months ago, abandoning his investment banking career at Macquarie Capital in London and trying to start his own business. "I am launching an e-commerce business here in London, which will be live next week. My dream has always been to create something from scratch and to be my own boss. Sure - he adds - I now no longer fly business class, I had to return my Amex and I not longer indulge in five-star hotels".

Roux was born in Milan, the city where he completed his undergraduate studies at Bocconi University from 2003 to 2006. But then he chose England, and went for a Master's degree in accounting and finance at the London School of Economics. "My excellent studies opened the doors of investment banking in the summer of 2007, at Macquarie Capital, and so, with good salary, came four fine suits, a few Hermes ties and the dream of five-figure bonus".

It works for two full years, then Roux begins to feel the weight of having to stay most nights tied up to his desk until early morning, because "if you leave the office after your boss you tend to look like a slacker, one that does not put his soul into it." So Yannick matured the difficult decision to exit the system, to give up a career which he felt a bit too soulless.

"Now my website, likebees.com, is really shaping up. We plan to use the power of group buying around local services (restaurants, beauty centres, theatres, entertainment, gyms, go-karting and more) with the aim of obtaining significant discounts. We are currently discussing with several investors interested in financing us".

Will it work? Hard to say now. Surely, leaving the certain for the uncertain is not for the faint hearted, even if you are only 25 and the need for adventure is big.

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