James Maslow's Quotes

Am I as experienced, or mature, or smart as others CEOs? No probably not, but there's something, I think, very useful about having a founder as the CEO.

Generally, what people tend to underestimate is the cyborg nature of Groupon. We are a company that has the DNA of being both a technology company and a heavily operational company.

Groupon as a company - it's built into the business model - is about surprise. A new deal that surprises you every day. We've carried that over to our brand, in the writing and the marketing that we do, and in the internal corporate culture.

I look at being a capitalist businessperson like riding a bike - if I go too slowly, I'll fall over. Or it's kind of like a shark: if I stop swimming, I'll just die.

I think I was probably that kid in the neighborhood who you could expect once or twice a year to be knocking on your door trying to sell you something stupid.

I'm appalled that an industry has grown around teaching a practice as wholesome and spiritual as yoga, so I decided to create my own free video to help people get started.

I'm going to continue doing my thing and work my butt off to add value for shareholders and as long as they and the board see fit to keep me in this role, I feel enormously privileged to serve.

If I could get a deal on whatever my impulse was, whenever my impulse struck, and it was nearby, I would use that all the time. It would reshape the way that I shop.

In music, which was my world before, you've got thousands and thousands of years of great ideas that have already been thought of. But the internet is basically 20 years old. So you can be way stupider and still have world-changing ideas.

One of the challenges of innovation is figuring out how to wipe your mind clean about what you should be doing at any given moment, and not having a religious attachment to what's gotten you there thus far.

One of the things I realized... is how few success stories there are in websites or products or businesses that exist primarily for an altruistic purpose.

The popularity of Groupon has almost rendered the group-buying element of it obsolete, because we're able to deliver so many customers that the merchants are very happy with even the smallest number that we can provide.

There are over 2,000 direct clones of the Groupon business model. However, there's an equal amount of proof that the barriers to success are enormous. In spite of all those competitors, only a handful are remotely relevant.

I've been very lucky, from the beginning. I've found that as long as you're fundamentally good - as long as you're not being bad to people - people give you a lot of room to be yourself, because being yourself is being honest. And that's what people want to see.

I think if there's any difference between me and a traditional CEO, it's that I've been unwilling to change myself or shape my personality around what's expected.

If you look at Myspace, Facebook was a better product. It's as simple as that.

Life is too short to be a boring company.

One thing I've come to learn about myself is that I have to keep going.

Most small business owners are not particularly sophisticated business people. That's not a criticism; they're passionate about cutting hair or cooking food, and that's why they got in the business, not because they have an MBA.

Most of the time, the things that really change the world exist for something fundamentally selfish and then the world-changing ends up being a side-effect of that.

A lot of people can raise money.

Everybody loves a deal on a restaurant or skydiving or laser-hair removal.

I can't predict the future.

I didn't realize how hard it was to run a small business.

I don't get stressed out.

I feel like clout is something that builds up on your teeth.

I find myself using the word 'executives' now.

I just like to build things and do things.

I own over four ties.

I think the big thing about Groupon is just people had never seen anything grow quite so fast.

I'm just not used to talking that much about myself. It feels strange.

If I told people that I knew what I was doing, nobody would believe me, so why even try and fake it?

If you don't have those moments where you go too far, then you're probably not going far enough.

If you have a great business, if you're great at your craft people should be coming in there. It shouldn't be this secret.

If you're open with people and provide context for the decisions that your making, customers will stick with you.

In terms of fear, I still am most afraid of Freddie Kruger.

Life is not about money.

Local businesses have never had a great way to get customers in the door.