"Altogether, $946.8 million, or roughly 86% of the funds raised across the three investments, was paid out to Groupon directors, officers and stockholders. Just $151.4 million was retained by the company to use as working capital and for general corporate purposes."
It's mind-blowing that anyone would subscribe to an F or G round in the first place. That they would do so despite the obvious scammy nature of the whole thing is probably criminal, at least if they were managing OPM.
Greater fool theory, they're thinking they'll make money on the IPO. They might have, actually, or they were very close to doing so -- a couple more weeks before the bad press Groupon started getting around the IPO and they'd have been sitting pretty.
There was a comment yesterday about how investors only operate by FOMO ("fear of missing out"). Once you convince one, many more will follow.
That's one reason this go-nowhere, do-nothing startup had so many investors: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/clinkle — it's all psychological games ungrounded in any sense of reality. Once you have one name brand investor on board, the other investors basically abdicate their entire decision making ability.
If you've ever been turned down by a16z, you can legitimately go around saying investors think less of you than they think of clinkle.
There might be direct pressure from earlier investors to commit to an F or G round so that on future deals you might get in earlier on the next racket.
