OpenTable

OpenTable dumps the daily deal

On Monday, the company that made the ‘daily deal‘ famous went public. Groupon’s debut as a publicly-traded company was successful, despite the widespread criticism the company had received in the months leading up to its IPO.

Going public, of course, doesn’t mean that Groupon has answered the serious questions about its business model and future prospects. And if moves by another player that entered the daily deals space is any indication, the company that turned daily deals into a billion-dollar market may have its work cut out for it.

Is Google’s Zagat acquisition its most problematic ever?

Yesterday, Google announced that it is acquiring Zagat, a company whose name has become synonymous with printed restaurant guides. By size, the acquisition is likely nowhere near Google’s largest.

As observed by TechCrunch, it appears that the acquisition price was under $66m.

But Google’s Zagat acquisition has created quite a lot of buzz, and for good reason: this could arguably be Google’s most problematic and challenging acquisition ever.

LinkedIn: happy days are here again!

For those who lived through the .com boom and bust of the late 1990s,
the last decade has been interesting. The internet is now bigger, and
stronger. Today’s success stories, including Facebook, Groupon and
Zynga, have taken center stage, and look set to cash in.

Yesterday, LinkedIn, the popular social network for professionals went public. And boy did investors party like it was 1999.

OpenTable: value is in the eye of the beholder

Take a look at the stock chart for restaurant industry solutions provider OpenTable and you’re likely to assume that the world is a pretty good place for OpenTable right now. OpenTable has been a hit with investors since going public, and its 126 price-to-earnings ratio brings back memories of the .com boom.

But behind the scenes, questions are being raised about OpenTable’s value proposition to the restaurateurs it serves.

Yelp and OpenTable: is a dinner date inappropriate?

Last week, popular reviews site Yelp announced that it had teamed up
with OpenTable to offer Yelp users the ability to book restaurant
reservations through OpenTable directly on the Yelp site.

A Yelp-OpenTable relationship is one that some have speculated about
for some time now, and given that 29% of the businesses reviewed on
Yelp are restaurants, the integration between the two services seems like a no-brainer.

What does shying away from advertising get you in a down market? An IPO

Later tonight, OpenTable plans to announce its IPO. The San Francisco-based restaurant reservations system, headed by former eBay and PayPal executive Jeff Jordan, filed for a $40 million initial public offering in February, which then made it only the third venture nationwide to file for an IPO this year.

So how did the company manage 21% growth in revenue since last year and position itself to IPO in such a beleagured market? By forgoing advertising for a subscriptions model and some formidable marketing muscle.