Groupon, Grouper and the intuitive company

Despite their successes, some companies seem to not make sense no matter how many times they are explained to me or their markets are outlined or they are championed by VCs or Wall Street or whoever. One of my buddies described Groupon (or Living Social etc) as "voluntary spam," and not only do I not know anyone that has purchased a Groupon, I don't know anyone who enjoys getting their emails. I'm technically a subscriber to their mailing list, but it's the first email I delete in the morning and I don't look at any of the offers. The company is obviously doing something right, despite pulling their IPO, but I simply do not understand how the product itself has proven to be a hit when it seems to be a novelty at best and annoying at worst.

Grouper on the other hand is a company that is almost too intuitive to not have been created already. A friend originally introduced me to the concept a couple months ago and instantly it seemed like a company that, if done properly, would achieve tremendous scale. Early results are that it has been done properly.

The basic way it works is as follows:
1. You log into Grouper through your Facebook
2. Grouper looks for people of the opposite sex “taking into account age / education / personalities / interests / attractiveness”
3. Sets you and a group of two friends up with another group of three with similar interests for a dinner / night out

Conceptually it tries to pair you with friends you don't yet know.


Grouper tries not to position its offering as a date, but it's just that. It's a date masked as a group hangout, and it is perfect for the socially networked generation where everyone seems to know everyone through someone. The generation directly out of college, the Where Have the Good Men Gone? generation, it's a logical leveraging of social networks. Online dating for people in their early 20s still has a stigma as weird, but a group hangout seems much safer. Much more acceptable. There are obvious logistical issues to the actual night out (like friends boxing each other out, jockeying for the attractive girl in the group) but the concept itself remains novel and should prove to be extremely successful, because it's not online dating. It's a group hangout. A group hangout that will ultimately make the founders a lot of money.