Author Archives: Rakesh Agrawal

About Rakesh Agrawal

Rakesh Agrawal is a 0-1 product leader. Ex-Amazon, Ex-Microsoft, as well as a number of startups. He tweets at @rakeshsfnyc

Groupon, LivingSocial and daily deals – consumer FAQ

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

Judging from the queries that come to this blog, there are a lot of questions that consumers have about daily deals from Groupon and LivingSocial. If you are a merchant and are interested in learning about the merchant experience, see … Continue reading →

Posted in daily deals, groupon, livingsocial | 3 Comments

Groupon, LivingSocial and daily deals – merchant FAQ

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

Judging from the queries that come to this blog, there are a lot of questions that merchants have about daily deals from Groupon and LivingSocial. If you are a consumer and are interested in learning about the consumer experience, see the Groupon … Continue reading →

Posted in daily deals, groupon, livingsocial | 22 Comments

PR tip: My policy on vanity metrics

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

As you may have seen in my VentureBeat post, I’m not a fan of vanity metrics. They are dishonest to consumers and the media. And they’re bad for startups because they shift focus to the next milestone to announce and … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The chart every member of Congress should see

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

This chart illustrates the market capitalization of 3 top tech companies and 4 top media companies. (In billions.) If you add up the 4 media companies, they are roughly half the valuation of Apple. Even the largest of these media … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

My New Year’s message

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

If you’d told me at the beginning of 2011 that I’d be returning to my journalism roots and appearing regularly on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, I never would’ve believed it. 2011 was a crazy year. It was full of many … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

PayPal to try to compete with Groupon, but will it matter?

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

PayPal is preparing to launch a Groupon competitor in the first quarter of 2012, according to Bloomberg. The eBay subsidiary hopes to tap into its base of 103 million accountholders. From what I’ve seen so far, this doesn’t seem like … Continue reading →

Posted in daily deals, groupon | 1 Comment

Scanning bar codes seems to be a popular holiday pastime

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

IDC’s 2011 shopper survey shows shockingly high usage of smart phone scanning tools to scan bar codes and QR codes. Nearly 1/3 of those surveyed said they had scanned a bar code. A common use of this technology is to … Continue reading →

Posted in local search, mobile, mobile search | 1 Comment

Coping with a life-changing disease

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

TL;DR: I expect that I’ll be fine. I debated whether to post this, but decided that there was an off-chance that someone might find this information valuable. I was diagnosed with diabetes in September. For someone who has never been … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

LivingSocial testing new subscription service

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Rakesh Agrawal

LivingSocial is testing a new subscription service called LivingSocial Plus. For $20 a month, subscribers will receive $25 in Deal Bucks good on LivingSocial purchases. $5 is good only in that month, the remaining $20 can be carried over for … Continue reading →

Posted in daily deals, groupon, livingsocial | 1 Comment