(Photo: AlanLevenson.com)

In a stunning gesture of support for EXCLUSIVE airplane journalism, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is leading a $5 million round in Business Insider, the web property helmed by Henry Blodget. The news comes following a detailed New Yorker profile of Mr. Blodget, who launched Business Insider after being banned from the securities industry for civil securities fraud.

An internal memo published on Business Insider (natch) written by Mr. Blodget says that the company is raising $5 million, with Mr. Bezos chipping in "a significant investment." The fresh capital brings Business Insider's total amount raised to $18.3 million.

"This capital will allow us to continue to invest aggressively in many areas of the business, including editorial, tech/product, sales and marketing, subscriptions, and events," Mr. Blodget wrote. "As we mentioned last night, it will also allow us to expand our office."

The raise comes at a time when the company is reportedly losing money, though Mr. Blodget has pegged its $3 million loss in 2012 as an "investment." According to Paid Content:

TBI chairman Kevin Ryan says the company will do $11 million this year (last summer someone told the WSJ the company would do $12 million in 2012); he says the site has only spent $7 million of the $13 million it has raised.

Though Comscore pegs the site’s traffic at 9 million, Blodget tells Auletta that his Google Analytics numbers are at 24 million unique monthly users, many of whom come from outside the U.S.

AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka notes that since the New Yorker profile was published on Monday, BI’s revenue projections jumped--sorry, JUMPED--from $11 million to $15 million.

Mr. Blodget has a history with Amazon. He originally rose to fame in 1998 by accurately predicting a price target of $400 in Amazon stock, which eventually led to his hiring at Merrill Lynch.

The investment will likely increase the number of stated disclosures for BI writers covering Amazon products or services, as well as Mr. Bezos' other investments. But the editorial side must be accustomed to negotiating that ethical line, as it already counts powerhouses like Marc Andreessen and Allen & Company as investors. And the writers there don't seem to mind adding another one to the list. "Do you really think I'm going to care what some billionaire thinks about my Kindle whatever review?" tweeted Silicon Alley Insider editor Steve Kovach.

YO. (Photo: TechCrunch )

File this one under 'second acts in American lives': This week, Business Insider honcho Henry Blodget gets the New Yorker treatment (subscription only, you cheap bastards), with a profile by none other than the bold-faced Ken Auletta. Sure, he's still banned for life from the securities business (for now!), but being written up by Mr. Auletta ain't too bad as a life consolation prize.

In Mr. Auletta's estimation, the media mogul comes across like a bit of huckster. Take, for example, his spiritual presence in the newsroom: “When he talks, his arms swing and his voice rises, conveying the enthusiasm of an evangelist." Early employee Peter Kafka came to a similar conclusion:  "He’s an excellent communicator," adding, "He has a great Barnum in him."

Ringmasters may bring the crowds, but you don't want to end up with a briefcase full of snake oil, either:

"A senior Wall Street executive, asked if he trusted Blodget, said, 'Of course not. This doesn't mean he can't have good ideas. But he's a promoter.'"

You don't say!

Mr. Auletta even lends his considerable powers of analysis to explain that absurd "I Rode in a Big Metal Sky Bird!" post:

"The post is consistent with a conscious decision that Blodget says he made at the outset 'to put the fun back in business' by making light of people in the news and of himself. 'If we see something is funny, we don't wait to see if the Pulitzer Committee likes it,' he said. 'We post it.'"

Mr. Auletta boils the company down to its essence: "If Bloomberg and Fleshbot had an illegitimate child, it might look something like Business Insider."

Unfortunately, all that song and dance isn't enough to turn Business Insider into a money-printing enterprise just yet, but you can't have everything. According to the piece, Business Insider lost $3 million in 2012, though Mr. Blodget later added on Twitter that the company turned a small profit in Q1. (He also insisted that $3 million was an "investment," not a loss.)

The company's chairman, the ubiquitous Kevin Ryan, blames the loss on aggressive expansion and says the company will do $11 million this year in revenue this year. Mr. Ryan admitted, though: "That's tiny. Ad rates are low. It's tough to monetize."

Still, we like to imagine William Randolph Hearst looking down with a gleam in his eye and a whisper: "Attaboy."

(Photo: AlleyCorp)

A little more than a year ago, Betabeat reported that despite his lofty role as chairman and chief executive officer of 10gen, the company behind the MongoDB database language, Dwight Merriman was still mixing it up with his developers, drinking beer and writing code with the company's engineers. 

So when news broke this morning that Mr. Merriman was giving up the CEO job at 10gen to focus his time on the chairman's role, we wondered if it meant he was giving up the technical side of his function to concentrate on the business side of things. Au contraire.

"I was the CEO that codes," Mr. Merriman told us over the telephone this afternoon. "Now that the company is order of magnitudes bigger, the coding part of the job has been getting squeezed."

To free Mr. Merriman up to keep his hands on the product, 10gen elevated Max Schireson from the role of president to CEO, allowing Mr. Merriman to spend more time working on the company's core database kernel. That could mean coding, or architecture or product definition, Mr. Merriman said, stressing that he'll still be engaged in functions more typically associated with a company's chairman.

"It was sort of interesting question what the right title would be," he said. "The best analogy is probably that I'm operating like a founder of company would do, where I touch lots of things. If we changed my title to something more tech, that’s not accurate either. I'll still be doing a lot of work on the business side, whether it's thinking about strategy or talking to customers."

At that, a founder's role is appropriate for Mr. Merriman, the DoubleClick veteran who cofounded 10gen in 2007 as part of the AlleyCorp network. Of course, it was less than two months ago that another AlleyCorp company saw its top executive move on to a chairman's position. Did Kevin Ryan's decision to cede the CEO job at Gilt Groupe influence Mr. Merriman's thinking about his own role at 10gen?

"I think the timing similarity is completely random and coincidental, and the reason for those changes is different," Mr. Merriman said. "For one thing Kevin is spending a little more time on 10gen, a day a week up from something more like a director's level of engagement. ... For me, it's no change in the distribution of my time."

(We told Mr. Merriman that if Henry Blodget—CEO of Business Insider, another AlleyCorp company—announces he's giving up his CEO title, we'd be mad at Mr. Merriman for not giving us a hint.)

Meanwhile, Mr. Merriman said he decided to make the change ahead of 10gen's annual meeting next week, when the company's 200 employees will gather in Florida. The changes, the new chairman said, from Mr. Schireson's ascension, Mr. Ryan's added involvement and his own more varied role, would help to build on the company's promising 2012.

"There's huge potential there," Mr. Merriman said. "It's growing so fast, it’s going to be a very large company."

Mason (screen grab).

What's a young CEO to do amid rumors that he may soon be relieved of his duties? Hunker down and lobby privately for an extended tenure? Or sit for a public interview on the subject of his imminent demise?

That was the question from Groupon CEO Andrew Mason faced this week, as gossip swirled that he would cancel a planned experience at Business Insider's Ignition conference following AllThingsD's dish suggesting management changes could be in the offing at the Chicago-based company.

In the end, Mr. Mason decided to attend as scheduled. The first question he faced from Henry Blodget: "Is the board going to fire you tomorrow?"

"Here's a news flash, our stock is down 80 percent," Mr. Mason answered. "It would be weird if the board wasn't asking if I was the right guy to do the job."

Maybe going forward with the interview was a savvy decision. If, as The Wall Street Journal reported last night, discussions about replacing Mr. Mason centered on the company's need to do a better job communicating its successes, the chatter ahead of the conference only ensured that journalists far and wide would be hanging on his every word.

To that end, Mr. Mason presented as self-assured, acknowledging the company's struggles—"When you're creating a new category, there's going to be bumps along the road" and taking in stride Mr. Blodget's repeated prodding—"if I ever didn't think I was the right person for the job, I'd be the first person to fire myself."

It wasn't until Mr. Blodget invoked his own reputational rise-and-fall to ask how Mr. Mason handled the criticism—"Does it suck?"—that the Groupon founder resorted to sarcasm: "No it's awesome Henry, it's the greatest thing of the world."

Meanwhile, Mr. Mason took the moment in the spotlight as the opportunity to tout Groupon's strong point, including 38 percent year-over-year growth in gross billings in North America, high volume of mobile transactions and never-ending search—including new forays into travel and shipping goods directly to people's houses—for ways to make money. Mr. Mason admitted that Groupon's international business was lagging--the result of a rapid expansion, but said it was all part of the long-term plan.

"There's so much exciting stuff happening in the company, that tends to be what we're focused on," he said. "We've built up a resiliency to the external noise, because we know what's in the best interest of our shareholders is not optimizing for three months from now, but optimizing for three years from now."

Be that as it may, there's a reason for the chatter about who will lead Groupon in the future. The stock, as Mr. Mason noted, has fallen precipitously since the company's Novemeber 2011 IPO, and third-quarter earnings didn't exactly make investors smile. Where Mr. Mason sees Groupon's diversity of offerings as a strength, others might see a lack of focus. Last month brought news that the Securities and Exchange Commission is sniffing around the company again. The breakneck pace of Groupon's growth—zero to 12,000 employees in four years—had made it a very different company than the quirky deals service Mr. Mason founded.

Mr. Mason didn't actually say whether he expected the board to fire him. But he did take a subtle dig at the notion that the company needs an adult—someone such as Google's Eric Schmidt—to help the rapidly growing startup mature.

"We've had plenty of professionals that we've brought into Groupon in various roles," he said. "And we've seen the speed and at times, the chaos of Groupon, crush them as seasoned professionals."

On the other hand, if seasoned pros can't handle the chaos of Groupon, what makes Mr. Mason think that he can?

No fair distracting us with cattitude. (Photo: Vanity Fair)

Late last night, Twitter tongues wagged as to whether Groupon's goofy CEO Andrew Mason would actually show up for his scheduled appearance at Business Insider's Ignition conference in New York, especially after his name disappeared from the agenda.

"He has been off most relevant agendas for quite some time. The exception, of course, is the SEC watch list," Interview Circuit founder Jon Sterling quipped, referencing the beleaguered company's repeated run-ins with the commission (most recently over revenue details from its new business lines and questions about the daily deal site's financial revision this spring.)

Mr. Mason's presence seemed even less likely after scoop master general Kara Swisher trotted out sources who claimed discussions were underway about "making major leadership changes" at Groupon, "including bringing in a more experienced CEO to take over for co-founder Andrew Mason."

We thought for sure that would send Mr. Mason on a flight back to Chicago, and so did Business Insider, until they got the good news:

On the contrary, we got a call from Mason's team saying, in effect, "Well, now you have an interesting first question."

We're not sure how loosely to interpret that "in effect." Perhaps it was more like: Go ahead and try to get something out of him?

Regardless, there's one particular bit from Ms. Swisher's report about the company needing its own Eric Schmidt that we hope gets addressed. Is the problem really with Mr. Mason or Groupon's meandering business model?

Map-maker, Map-maker, Build Me a Map! If Tim Cook's mea culpa wasn't enough to demonstrate how hard Apple is scrambling to fix its iOS 6 mapocalypse, then how about its last ditch recruiting techniques to find Ruby developers? Mojo Talantikite, a cluster engineer at Engine Yard in New York City, said he (and a number of his technically talented friends) have been hit up by Apple recruiters recently.

The recruiter's LinkedIn inquiry mentions "Maps" specifically:

"We are looking for a passionate Ruby coder to have a HUGE impact our Maps, Flyover, Geo and Siri teams in iOS. I've read about your work on Heroku's infrastructure. Is it a good time for you to chat?"

My, What Colorful Balls You Have Startup perks tend to veer toward the infantile. Between the snacks, slides, and nap pods, managers might as well try to wipe your nose when you sneeze. But newly-married Elepath founder Jakob Lodwick actually committed, procuring the ball pool of your childhood dreams for Elepath's San Francisco "studio." At least that's what we thought based on his recent Instagram offering. However, on closer inspection, an antimated gif from Elepath's blog reveals the ball pool is less Chuck E. Cheese and more kiddie pool. Things on the Internet, it seems, may be smaller than they appear.

Cussing For a Cause Last week Tech4Obama hosted an evening in New York with serial entrepreneur and current CTO for Obama for America Harper Reed. Next to the guest list--heavily studded with Silicon Alley stalwarts like Soraya Darabi, Rachel Sklar, and Betaworks' Andrew McLaughlin and investor Pedro Torres Picon--the invitation loudly warned "THIS EVENT IS CLOSED TO PRESS." Now we know why. Apparently the bearded Mr. Reed has quite the mouth on him. But doesn't he know reporters love that shit?

Colorblind We're still not really sure what Color was launched to do, but it got $40 million in funding to do it. The app subsequently became the archetypal overfunded startup representing tech's hype bubble (even inspiring a fake pitch deck!). Color treaded in the wave pool for a bit before pivoting to a new idea altogether.

Now, TechCrunch reports that Color may be experiencing an executive level shakeup, with sources saying CEO Bill Nguyen will be taking a step back from from day-to-day operations at the flailing company. In his stead, an "executive committee" has been assembled to take over his responsibilities.

Mr. Nguyen apparently hasn't shown up to the office in two months, leading sources to conjecture that he's "probably either in Tahoe or Hawaii.” (Ugh.) An ominous Quora post from January of this year wondered why Color had shuttered its Palo Alto office, but CNET journalist Casey Newton responded that the company said they'd "hung some paper up to cover its windows while they do some work inside." Hmm, engineers do have some weird working habits.

Of course, a question about why Mr. Nguyen left Color immediately cropped up on Quora and was quickly answered with a cringe-worthy response. "After the disastrous pivot from the initial (fairly brilliant, but poorly implemented) photo sharing concept, it was really only a matter of 'Nguyen, not if'."

Sigh.

Digging K-Pop Looks like Digg cofounder Kevin Rose is officially a fan of the "Gangnam Style" hype. Mr. Rose posted a photo on his Instagram of a little bobble head Psy doing the infamous horse dance, sharing a photo of his Psy laptop decal shortly after. Try to ignore the awkward comment about "open condom style," below.

(Photo: Instagram)

Business Tattler Henry Blodget proudly outed Verge's editor-in-chief today, tweeting, "Josh Topolsky reads Business Insider!" But the real question is: does he hate read it?

As always: Overheard a juicy tidbit about impending departures or imminent acquisitions? Dying to dish about startup blunders or frothy financing? Holler at your girls: tips@betabeat.com

(Photo: Vanity Fair)

Annie Leibovitz's Silicon Alley photo shoot has finally made its way into print, as part of Vanity Fair’s annual "New Establishment" list. As we'd hoped, the magazine opted to pose Arianna Huffington in the sidecar of David Karp’s vintage motorcycle. (Guest appearance by Mr. Karp's "French-English bulldog," Clark.) Only in the version that made the October issue, Dennis Crowley is depicted emerging from a manhole, avec le swag. As before, the annual list is chockablock with tech types, but just like last year, Silicon Valley dominates.

Peter Thiel comes in at no. 37, repping for libertarian utopias between Tyler Perry and Ryan Seacrest. Elon Musk is no. 9 on the list, two rungs higher than Adele, but one spot below a new entrant: Pinterest's Ben Silberman, no. 8. Despite Square's caffeine-fueled growth, Jack Dorsey stayed at the no. 5 spot, but finally got the fashion props he's been waiting for. "It’s a Prada suit; for everyday wear, it’s denim from Scott Morrison’s Earnest Sewn line, which was the first brand to use Twitter."

Scattered among the elite are a handful of New York techies, present and accounted for. By and large, it's the same group of people as last October, although it's interesting to note how Vanity Fair assesses their power ranking, year-over-year.

Herb Allen III, Allen & Co.: Mr. Allen, one of the underwriters for Facebook's contentious IPO, moved up one spot from no. 19 to no. 18. "Managed to stay under the radar as Morgan Stanley took the blame for the bungled offering."

Sean Parker, entrepreneur: Last year, the owner of Bacchus House in the West Village came in at no. 34. This year, he's off the list entirely. A critique of Airtime's ho-hum adoption rates, perhaps?

Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, Flatiron Partners: Mr. Wilson is moving up in the world--and fast! He jumped from no. 35 last year to no. 23, outranking fellow tech investor Ashton Kutcher (no. 25), if you can believe that.

Dennis Crowley, Foursquare: Mr. Manhole Crowley dropped four places from no. 45 to no. 49. C'mon, doesn't a Best Buy commercial during the Olympics count for anything these days? Vanity Fair pegs Naveen Selvadurai's recent de-foundering as a "power play."

Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe, Business Insider: The DoubleClick alum, recently profiled in The New York Times for AlleyCorp's stable of winners, moves up from no. 46 last year to no. 42, with a nod to Gilt Groupe's impending IPO.

Henry Blodget, Business Insider: Mr. Blodget, your caps lock key's best friend, fell off the list this year, from 2011's perch at no. 48. That's okay, he'll keep advising Facebook from the side.

David Karp, Tumblr: Consider this Mr. Karp's coming out party. Last year, the 26-year-old was relegated to the magazine's "Next Establishment" list. But this year, he debuted at no. 44, just behind Lena Dunham (no. 43) despite Tumblr's influence among navel-gazing millenials.

(Photo: Vanity Fair)

Honorable Mention: Perry Chen, Charles Adler and Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter. The crowdfunders didn't make the list, but they did get a get a brief profile in the issue--and a chance to model some well-cut skinny suits. Vanity Fair gives the cofounders, recently scuffed up in the press for overfunded projects' failure to deliver, a shout out for creating "a new product category: the indie gadget." By this time next year, we predict they'll be hovering around no. 45 for ushering in the resurgence of hardware.

(Photo: Top News)

Marissa Mayer is reportedly getting straight to work Googlifying Yahoo. She officially made the food in the Valley HQ free again, much to the delight of the company's starving engineers. [AllThingsD]

Speaking of Ms. Mayer, Dave McClure thinks she should focus on transforming Yahoo into a female-oriented company. Unfortunately, he called his blog post on the idea, "Pink is the new Purple." [500 Hats]

Craigslist is stifling innovation by suing PadMapper. [New York Times]

Companies actually listen to your online reviews. Rejoice, asshole Yelpers! [Wall Street Journal]

Presented without comment: "Mr. Blodget now presides over Business Insider from a makeshift standing desk in the middle of a 50-person newsroom in New York, where he barks questions ("Is it cool?" "Can we clip that video?") at his reporters." [WSJ]

Unfortunately, the story is a write-around, which means Mr. Blodget didn't get access to Mr. Zuckerberg--natural during the quiet period. And if you've read David Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect, seen Zuck sweat on stage with Kara Swisher, perused Ken Auletta's excellent profile of Sheryl Sandberg, or can name the founders of Andreessen Horowitz, there isn't much news to report.

We did, however, enjoy Mr. Blodget's opaque nod to that time he got banned for life from the securities industry for pumping up stocks in public, while he was bad-mouthing them in private: 

"Many promising tech companies place too much emphasis too soon on the business rather than the product. They worry too much about “making money.” This sounds nuts—aren’t companies supposed to make money?—and it sounds especially nuts in the wake of the dot-com bust. But that crash was a product of investors’ and analysts’ overexuberance (sorry!), not evidence of a fundamental flaw in the tech industry’s start-up ecosystem."

It would be easier to forgive Mr. Blodget if he spent some time in the magazine talking about why he thinks Facebook's IPO will be "enormous Muppet bait," as he tweeted last week, rather than taking Zuck at his word in an SEC filing when he wrote, "We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services." As documents have shown, Facebook Timeline, for example, is a better service . . . but for brands.

Update: Perhaps Mr. Blodget has some insider intel on Mr. Zuckerberg's motivations that we don't. New York magazine neglects to mention it, but Facebook director Marc Andreessen, whose venture capital firm owns 6.6 million Facebook shares according to the latest S-1 filing, has also participated in Business Insider's last three investment rounds. Allen & Company, one of the investment firms underwriting Facebook's IPO, has also repeatedly invested in Business Insider, the company where Mr. Blodget serves as cofounder, CEO, and editor-in-chief. Andreeseen Horowitz, who Mr. Blodget eagerly credits in New York mag for ushering in an era of "founder CEOs," also made $78 million from Facebook's billion purchase of Instagram, a decision Mr. Blodget praises effusively in the magazine. 

Update, 5.10 p.m.: Lauren Starke, New York magazine's communication manager respond to Betabeat's inquiry about disclosures by email:

"Henry Blodget is transparent about his associations with the firms and companies he writes about on Business Insider, and has also openly questioned whether Facebook shares will be worth what other valuations have priced them at. That said, disclosure is always a good thing, and our article should have noted that Marc Andreessen is an investor in Business Insider; the online version of the story will be updated accordingly."

Where Mr. Blodget, a former star analyst for Merrill Lynch before Eliot Spitzer intervened, really shines is in a handy table about the intersection between tech and Wall Street called "Silicon Valley Is Allergic to Slicked-Back Hair." According to Mr. Blodget:

Goldman Sachs needs a new barber.

One of Goldman Sachs’ main Internet bankers in Silicon Valley is named Scott Stanford. And one problem with Stanford, says a Valley executive, is that “his UI,” or user interface, is “off-putting.” Pressed for details, the executive mentioned Stanford’s “slicked-back hair.”

It pays to be a banker in the street, but a geek in the head, at least for Morgan Stanley star Michael Grimes.

He’s described as “incredibly hardworking” and “honest, direct, and smart” but also “weird” (one V.C. mentions Grimes’s alleged habit of playing video games until 5 a.m.) and “a dork” (a Valley executive tells of the time Grimes received a call from a client in the middle of a conference room in which lawyers, bankers, and accountants were working around a table drafting a financing document; instead of excusing himself, Grimes slid under the table and continued the conversation, murmuring away as the drafting session ostensibly continued above).

Andrew Ross Sorkin's source on Goldman's private-placement memo, may have been coming from inside the industry:

There’s a tantalizing conspiracy theory to Goldman’s Facebook debacle. Before Facebook kicked off the Goldman transaction, the story goes, CFO David Ebersman called Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan to give them the heads-up. Knowing the headaches it could cause Goldman, one of these bankers called the Times’ Sorkin and tipped him off. Goldman likes this version. The idea that it would be so ham-fisted as to blow up its own deal is mortifying.

We'd also recommend taking a look at the ever-incisive Paul Ford, who makes an appearance in New York mag's Facebook cover package as well. Mr. Ford argues that Facebook hasn't peaked because of its OAuth service, which lets you log in to websites and apps. Having hundreds of millions of people use your product as an identity layer has a way of giving it legs. See, now that is brillz.

It doesn't contain any groundbreaking revelations on the company. It's not going to open them up to further points of scrutiny or single-handedly change the fate of Groupon's IPO.

But it does offer some great insight from the inside and it  is, admittedly, an excellent read. Here are our favorite parts:

1. Groupon as Oz. The way early Groupon is described, it sounds a little euphoric: a stratospheric rise paired with ever-increasing salaries and a metastasizing employee base that in retrospect, looks patently absurd:

"Working there was crazy," says another early employee. "[From 2009 to 2010] we hired 10,000 people. That was completely insane — something that's never happened before, and should never happen again. We ended up in 45 countries in 16 months. It was nuts, it was fun, it was a blast."

2. Why Groupon Rejected The Google Offer. Groupon was offered a $5.75B buyout offer by Google they ended up leaving on the negotiating table. Google has since come up with their own daily deals scheme, Google Offers, which they've padded by bringing other, more experienced retail deals ventures in this field into their own fold, which they'll be using to joust against competition like, you guessed it, Groupon. Why'd Andrew Mason and Co. walk away from all that cash? The prevalent theory was always a matter of ego. The truth, if BI's sources are to be believed? Not so much.

In the end, Groupon rejected the Google offer too.
"There's only one reason that didn't happen," says a source close to Groupon.
"Anti-trust."
Groupon's board worried that the FTC would take 9 to 18 months to review the merger, and that there was a very good chance it would kibosh the deal.

And, of course, a little bit of greed:

Says a source: "Had [Google] made a $7.5 billion deal instead of a $5.75 billion deal, I think it would have gotten done."

3. Groupon as Boiler Room. As BI tells it, G progresses from a magic startup culture carpet ride into a place that resembles something more like  Boiler Room (or, you know, a cross between an investment bank and a trading floor where everyone is sweating over money, the meaning of which is still in the macro picture fairly obtuse). But they were making money. There's definitely that. And it wasn't entirely pleasing to everyone, either:

"Early sales reps could definitely make six figures," says one early employee. "Probably the ones that were the first 10 to 15, were probably making well into the six figures. A couple sales reps [were] probably making over $300,000." These massive pay days for entry level employees pissed off some of the older executives in Groupon's Chicago office.

4. ZE GERMANS! Last May, Groupon purchased German Groupon clone CityDeal for what's rumored to be in the area of $100M. CityDeal was owned by the Samwer Brothers: Marc, Oliver and Alexander. Now these guys own "about 6.5% of Groupon's shares." When the Germans came in, quite a bit changed in Groupon's once happy-go-lucky culture. The Germans—who are now, for all intents and purposes, running Groupon's sales teams through the company's head of UK operations—do not play around.

They rule it with an iron fist. With some mixture of admiration, fear, and revulsion, their way is known amongst Groupon employees as "The German Way." "They're very shrewd, savvy, sharp elbowed guys," says one source. "They are extreme capitalists," says another. "For them there is no soft and fluffy side of the business. They're revenue driven, not people driven." "I think a lot of us who were enchanted by Andrew's format of a combination of people and money and customer, were kind of turned off by The German Way. I think they really changed the internal happiness for the workplace." For one thing, "The German Way" has meant the end of absurd pay days for entry level employees doing nine to five work. It's also meant that Groupon's office place has become a much more intense for sales people. "It's a total boiler room sales culture. And it's really hardass. It's pretty hardcore."

Some Groupon employees think it's ruining the working utopia that Groupon once was. Others think that it's high time someone came in to ruin said utopia.

5. The ACSOI Numbers. ACSOI stands for "adjusted consolidated segment operating income." If you work in tech and have never heard of it, don't worry! If you work in finance and have never heard of it, don't worry! Because it's an accounting standard/metric that Groupon made up. Here's how BI explains it:

Basically, Groupon was taking the money it was spending on advertising to acquire new subscribers to its email and not counting that money as a quarterly, recurring expense — but as a one-time, capital expense, the way Google might account for the cost of building a new server farm. Groupon was saying that ACSOI helped it figure out the ratio between the amount of money it needed to spend on marketing to acquire a subscriber and how much that subscriber would be worth to the company over the long haul.

In other words, imagine Groupon as a crack dealer. Groupon is breaking down their costs by the amount of marketing and crack rocks it would take to get someone hooked on crack, and then on the other side of the equation, making estimates based on how addicted to crack they think their new crack-smokers will be. This is how they create their financial models.

The only problem is that Groupon doesn't sell crack. They sell Groupons.

Obviously this wouldn't make sense to, say, the SEC. So:

In later filings with the SEC, Groupon removed references to ACSOI, but a source familiar with Groupon's on-going accounting practices says "[Groupon] still [looks] at those metrics and measures, every week, every month, every quarter, internal. It is an important metric of how [Groupon measures] the health of the business."

6. Andrew Mason Can't Shut Up. The SEC has rules that state that in the leadup to an IPO, you basically can't go crazy talking to the press and hyping your company up. Lucky for Groupon, they have an entire tech press to do that for them. Unfortunately for Groupon, that isn't enough:

"This quiet period has been a fucking disaster," says one source who helped build the company. He says it's been particularly rough on Andrew Mason. "He's having a rough year because we went through this amazing run where we were the fair-haired child for a while, which all these great internet companies get to be. We went through it all quickly. We grew quickly [and] we went through the hate period more quickly than anyone." "I think the kid will come out of it much stronger. I think you'll see a different Andrew that's more serious, now that he's been beaten [down by] the biggest shit show in the history of quiet periods."

Not that it's something anybody couldn't tell, but it's fun to hear from the inside. There's more: biographical information about Andrew Mason, stories from the company's early days, that kind of thing. But the most compelling thing about Nicholas Carlson's sprawling narrative of Groupon—handily one of the best pieces of journalism about the company in recent months, and one of the best long-form narratives Business Insider has ever produced—is watching the company morph from an idealistic sales technology into a shitshow where billion-dollar valuations fluctuate day-to-day, where accountability has morphed from a bright-eyed team spirit into a cynical introspection set upon it by the cold, crass skepticism of the public, and how all these things—along with other territories impeding on its business—have changed what this company is at its core so fundamentally, and so quickly.

The revelations aren't stark or earth-shattering, but they absolutely provide a coherent measure of aggregate insight pretty unparalleled through now. It is, without question, a hell of a read.