Andrew Mason’s Life After Groupon

Andrew Mason’s Life After Groupon

Anthony Bolante/ReutersAndrew Mason is the co-founder of Groupon.

Andrew Mason is back.

In an online post on Thursday, Mr. Mason, the quirky co-founder of Groupon, announced his plans and gave an update on what he had been doing since being firedas Groupon’s chief executive at the end of February.

Mr. Mason revealed that he would become a part-time partner at Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley start-up incubator. That means he will spend one day a week over the next several months advising young companies. Later this summer, Mr. Mason, who has been based in Chicago, plans to move to San Francisco with his wife, he said.

Once there, he plans to start a company.“If there’s a silver lining to leaving Groupon, it’s the opportunity to start something new,” Mr. Mason said in the post. “I’ve accumulated a backlog of ideas over the last several years, my favorite of which I’ll be turning into a new company this fall.”

A onetime darling of the technology world, Groupon quickly fell from grace after going public in late 2011. The online commerce company reported quarter after quarter of disappointing results, and its stock price sank. It was not surprising to many observers when Mr. Mason was finally pushed out by the board.

(Still, the hedge fund Jana Partners apparently sees a promising future in Groupon; it accumulated a 3.3 percent stake in the company in the first quarter.)

In the months since leaving Groupon, Mr. Mason has been engaging in some “cliched pursuits of the unemployed,” he said. Those include traveling, losing weight and reading.

And then there’s the new album.

“One thing that surprised me” about managing Groupon employees, Mr. Mason said, “was that many would arrive at orientation with minimal understanding of basic business wisdom.”

“I came to realize that there was a real need to present business wisdom in a format that is more accessible to the younger generation.”

He continues:

It was with this in mind that I spent a week in LA earlier this month recording Hardly Workin’, a seven song album of motivational business music targeted at people newly entering the workforce. These songs will help young people understand some of the ideas that I’ve found to be a key part of becoming a productive and effective employee. I’m really happy with the results and look forward to sharing them as soon as I figure out how to load music onto iTunes, hopefully in the next few weeks.

This is not a joke, according to TechCrunch, which says it has confirmed with Mr. Mason that the album “is for real.”

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