Groupon Founder Andrew Mason Wins The Twitter IPO

Groupon founder, and former CEO, Andrew Mason had an interesting reaction to Twitter's confidential IPO.

Groupon's IPO was a messy process.

The company was shredded by the press, often called a "Ponzi scheme."

It used a controversial accounting metric called ACSOI, which tracked profitability if you didn't include marketing costs. This was a prepsterous metric since Groupon was all about marketing costs. The SEC forced it to redraft its S1, which is the IPO filing.

While Groupon was being attacked, Groupon had to be abide by the SEC's quiet period rules, so Mason couldn't explain the company's decisions. However, he sent out an email to employees that became public and he was investigated by the SEC for that.

Twitter will avoid a lot of the hype, and insults, by doing a confidential IPO. Its S1 won't be out until 21 days before the company hits the road to sell its stock to investors.