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 investors race for the exits as lockup ends

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

Groupon shares dropped to a new all-time low today as its lockup ended, releasing a torrent of new shares on to the market. Thirty minutes into the trading session, Groupon had already traded 75% of its average daily trading volume. … Continue reading →

Posted in daily deals, groupon | 2 Comments

Deal: Virgin America vouchers for travel through June 15

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

Last summer, Virgin America ran an incredible deal for air travel. I bought too many and need to get rid of some of them. These are great vouchers that are good for any city in Virgin’s route map. They are … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Why I didn’t write about Groupon’s 1Q earnings

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

Some of you undoubtedly noticed that I didn’t write up my views on Groupon’s earnings. It’s not because Groupon suddenly proved that I’ve been wrong for the past year. To the contrary, Groupon’s earnings report reinforced everything I believe about … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Bet with Alex Lawrence

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

I have a bet with Alex Lawrence that is a derivative of my bet with Paul Kedrosky. If I win my bet with Kedrosky on 5/15, I win the bet with Lawrence. This means that at the end of trading on … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

More PR tips for startups

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

Here are some more PR tips for startups: Be out there. Reporters often get story ideas or thoughts for sources by doing Google searches or looking through blogs. If you have a strong presence elsewhere, it increased the odds that … Continue reading →

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Weekly reader: GrubHub, Yelp, Groupon, computer science

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

I was in New Orleans for Jazz Fest this week, but managed to get more writing in than I expected. For the first time this week, we saw Groupon drop below 50% of its initial IPO price of $20, closing … Continue reading →

Posted in groupon, yelp | 1 Comment

Weekly Reader: Groupon, Sonos, why air travel sucks

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

I didn’t write any posts this week! I spent the first part of the week in Chicago chatting with current and former Groupon employees and with the folks at edo Interactive, Braintree and GrubHub. GrubHub has a very interesting product … Continue reading →

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Weekly Reader: Facebook virality, Twitter patents and Groupon’s Lefkofsky

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

This contains a summary of my work this week. I had two very important non-Groupon stories this week, on Facebook and Twitter. My work Secrets of Facebook’s success: Virality — Facebook’s photo tagging feature was an important driver of its growth. … Continue reading →

Posted in daily deals, facebook, groupon, twitter | 2 Comments

Staying connected with friends for frequent travelers

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

Since the mid-90s, I’ve been a frequent traveler. I’ve flown more than a million miles and stayed the equivalent of several years in hotel rooms. All of this can take a big toll on friendships and relationships. I recently came … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

“It just works” rules

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Rakesh Agrawal

Back in the day, I used to like to tinker with software and set configurations and such. The picture above is me working on my Commodore 64 a long, long time go. Back then, I rocked BASIC. I even wrote … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment