Lost among the pile-ons, told-you-sos, and delightful schadenfreude out there around the recent Groupon management change is a simple fact:  Andrew Mason has done a phenomenal job conceiving, founding and building Groupon to the company it is today; and in doing so has done more for the Chicago tech ecosystem than any other player.  We all owe Andrew a tip of our hats in appreciation for what he’s accomplished, including his incredibly courageous, honest, and self-aware farewell note to the troops.

It’s not easy starting a company and building one.  It’s incredibly difficult, in fact. Andrew not only created a company, and an entire new category of business, but he created the fastest growing business in the history of the world.  I’ll say it again, he created the fastest growing business in the history of the world.    In doing so, he’s had to deal with the struggle of both significant competition and the fatigue of potential customers as this brand new category shakes itself out.  He was able to deliver phenomenal returns to his early backers in the context of doing so.  And Andrew did all this with an incredible sense of humor and aplomb - despite being under incredible scrutiny and media attention.

And it’s no coincidence that Chicago’s latest tech renaissance, with 1871 as  a symbol, has arisen at the same time.  Back in the early ‘00, many of us early Chicago tech entrepreneurs used to say that what Chicago needed was a mammoth success - akin to what Microsoft did for Seattle and what AOL did for Virginia.  Yes there have been plenty of other great successes here - Performics, GrubHub, 37signals are just a few examples- but in my opinion, Groupon has been the later-stage rocket that’s put our tech industry into orbit.

Thanks Andrew for all you’ve done, and I can’t wait to see what you’ll be doing next.

I wrote my first new post in a while yesterday - you can read it here.

Here’s the short version:

In order to compete effectively against Apple and its tailwind, handset, tablet, PC and TV OEMs must significantly develop superior app discovery services to both drive consumer loyalty and give developers the “carrot” to focus on their platforms. These discovery experiences must be more than just search; they need to include personalized recommendations, apps from friends, trending apps, ample promotional inventory and mechanisms, and editorial reviews and roundups. OEMs need to find ways to make available thousands of Android apps that will work well on the new form factors. So the app discovery must also include the ability to gather apps from disparate sources and present optimized apps to users in an elegant manner.

Appolicious has been driving app discovery of iPhone Apps and Android Apps for 2.5 years now - and we are excited to see the growth in interest in our services since our deals were announced with Samsung and Best Buy.

Fastest way to jump start jobs:  Cut taxes.  Reasons are two fold:  for small companies, most of which are LLCs and S corps so taxed at personal rates, lower taxes means more cash to invest to hire people, and feel comfortable doing so.  Since most employment is from small companies, this is BY FAR the best thing that can be done now to drive jobs. And I see this with some of my own angel investments — less taxes to Uncle Sam would mean more hires, period.  Second reason is math - the after tax net present value of cash flows increases by definition with lower taxes, therefore making more investment projects hit target hurdle rates.   It works.  We should do it.  It’s NOT about the rich getting richer - it’s about giving small businesses the ability to hire more people.