The Point was a collective action platform that failed — Groupon's group buying saved it

In 2006, Andrew Mason was trying to cancel a phone contract and thought: what if people could band together to get what they wanted? He built The Point, a web platform launched in 2007 where people could organize around causes — fund a project, pressure a company, or change a policy. The platform used a 'tipping point' mechanism: nothing happened until enough people joined. The Point gained modest traction in Chicago but never took off as a platform for social action.

The problem was that people did not want to organize around causes. What they actually did on The Point was organize around discounts — they used the platform to round up enough people to buy the same product and demand a group discount. This was never the intended use, but it was the only thing that worked.

Eric Lefkofsky, an early investor who had put $1 million into the idea, pushed Mason to pivot entirely to group buying. In November 2008, they launched Groupon — a separate site offering one daily deal in each city, activated only when enough people bought it. The first deal was a two-for-one pizza offer at the bar on the first floor of their office building. It sold.

Groupon grew faster than any company in history. It reached a $1.35 billion valuation within 16 months of launch. In April 2010, it raised $135 million from Digital Sky Technologies. In December 2010, Google offered $6 billion to acquire the company — the board rejected it. Groupon went public in November 2011 at a $12.6 billion valuation. The collective action platform that failed because nobody wanted to organize causes had become a daily deals empire.