Something about rats and sinking ships. Hope all the talent there is planning their exit before the company exits for them. LivingSocial is not long for this world.
Parts of the PrivCo report might not be accurate, but I don't trust a word Tim O'Shaughnessy says. We were told long ago that we'd be profitable by now, and then there was a round of layoffs. Is he under any obligation to be truthful about any of this? It's an internal email within a private company. Take anything he says with a grain of salt.
He doesn't mention the allegation that LivingSocial owes more to merchants right now than they have on hand. As others here have mentioned, that's going to hurt the quality of deals they're able to put together at a time when they need to be building confidence with customers and merchants.
He also doesn't mention the threat of more closures and layoffs. From a business perspective, it makes no sense to pay high salaries to college educated 20-somethings to do customer support from expensive downtown DC loft office space, but he never mentioned that in any of the all-hands meetings when he said we would be profitable soon.
The constant theme in communication from management at LivingSocial is always "don't listen to what others are saying about us; they don't know the full picture." I wonder how much longer they can keep that up.
If they do go under, there will be a massive rush on all the talent that will suddenly become available. The brain drain is already beginning. A number of very talented engineers (not just Chad Fowler) have already left. They've been diplomatic about it, but the fact is that they saw better opportunities elsewhere. Anybody who says that the tenuousness of LivingSocial's continuing existence isn't at least a small factor has a bridge to sell you.
People won't jump ship all at once, but this is going to be a huge problem for recruitment. Salespeople and customer support staff are a dime a dozen. No news there. But anybody talented enough to be a developer at LivingSocial (and the talent is considerable) would have to be quite desperate to come on board at this time. HN readers know that the caliber of developer they need can choose where they work. Would you sign on in this environment?