Andrew Mason

Andrew Mason
Mason (right) at the E-G8 Forum in Paris, 2011
Born	1980 (age 36–37) Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania,U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Bachelor of Arts in Music (2003)
Alma mater	Bienen School of Music, Northwestern University
Known for	Founder and CEO of Groupon
Net worth	US $ 200 million (March 2013)
Spouse(s)	Jenny Gillespie

Andrew D. Mason (born 1980) is an American businessman and entrepreneur. He is the founder and former CEO of Groupon, a Chicago-based website offering users discounts on local businesses.

Mason grew up in an American Jewish family in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He graduated from Mt. Lebanon High School in 1999 and started a Saturday morning delivery service called "Bagel Express" when he was aged 15.

After graduating from Northwestern University in 2003 with a degree in music, Mason worked in web design for Chicago entrepreneur Eric Lefkofsky.

Mason stopped working with Lefkofsky to attend the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy after he was awarded a scholarship. However, he dropped out of his master's degree program several months after it started. Mason also interned and worked at prominent Chicago recording studio, Electrical Audio, under recording engineer Steve Albini, whom Mason cited as an inspiration on his subsequent work ethic.

Andrew was employed as a developer at InnerWorkings, a company founded by Lefkofsky, in 2006. Lefkofsky provided Mason with $1 million in "seed money" to bankroll The Point, a now largely inactive web platform, which was Mason's first entrepreneurial venture on the Internet.

It was found that The Point – a social initiatives platform whose name was inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point – was too abstract to market, and it was stripped down to the Groupon concept. Groupon is a website that sells deals to local businesses. Groupon's website states that since its beginning in November 2008, Groupon has sold more than six million deals. With Groupon taking 50 percent of every deal, plus a small credit-card handling fee, in late 2010 it was reported by Mashable that Groupon's annual revenue was $800 million.