The old economics.

Groupon filed an amended S-1 document today for its delayed IPO, which has been under scrutiny from investors and the SEC. The startup has been critiqued for the fact that is has had to boost spending to add users to its email list. The filing says the company plans to "significantly" reduce online marketing spending "over time as such investments yield insufficient returns," reports Bloomberg.

According to the filing, those marketing costs stopped paying off because of “changes in subscriber economics, achievement of subscriber saturation levels in various markets or a determination that subscriber growth objectives can be satisfied though alternative means."

The company insists that cutting back won't negatively impact businesses with existing subscribers, although trends have shown users tend to be less engaged and profitable over time.

This filing comes less than a week after the New York Times declared that "the Internet coupon fad is shrinking faster than fat from a weight-loss laser," along with the note that, "Just a few months ago, daily deal coupons were the new big thing." Of course, that article was discussing the "fading allure" for merchants and today's filing is about the difficulty getting consumers to sign up (there's no mention of how much it costs to convert them into regular users). But it does lend credence to the theory that the daily deals bubble may have already burst.

What's a few hundred million between friends?

One of the reasons a bubble formed in the tech sector back in the 1990s was that companies with very little history and flimsy financials were able to go public at hundred million dollar valuations. While the market for tech IPOs seems to be gathering steam, one encouraging sign is that the SEC is taking a hard look at some of the questionable accounting of Groupon, which has drawn a lot of criticism for its fishy S-1 filing and rush to spend capital paying back early investors and employees.

Groupon had an operating loss of $420 million last year. But the daily deal giant asked that stock pickers use a strange metric to gauge the company's profitability: adjusted consolidated operating incomes, or adjusted CSOI. As Reuters Breaking Views column pointed out, "Strip out marketing expenses, acquisition-related costs, stock compensation, interest expense and payments to the tax man and, presto, the Chicago startup led by Andrew Mason earned $60.6 million. If investors accepted this fantastical form of accounting, all sorts of companies would be worth billions more too."

And here is the breakdown from Peter Kafka on how Groupon used its investment capital. "Groupon raised a total of $946 million in two funding rounds last winter. It kept $136 million of it help run the money-losing company. The remaining $810 million was paid out, via stock purchases, to CEO Andrew Mason and some of his backers, including Eric Lefkofsky, and, notably, the Samwer brothers, who sold their CityDeal company to Groupon in 2010."

We'll reserve judgement until the company puts out its revised S-1, and acknowledge that this is a new market where growing fast is vital.  But a money losing company that is using new investor's money to pay back old ones and scrambling to dump the whole hot mess on a public hungry for tech IPOs is not a pretty picture.

Thanks Shai. Numbers are hard!

This is a guest post by Shai Goldman, a Director at Silicon Valley Bank

Zynga, the biggest casual gaming company in the nation and the maker of popular games titles such as Farmville, CityVille and Mafia Wars, filed for its IPO today.

To summarize quickly,  Zynga is performing extremely well. They were profitable in 2010 and will continue to be profitable in 2011 (based on 2011 Q1 figures). They are looking to raise $1B through the IPO and have $996.7 in cash on the books.

One of the highlights is that top line revenue is growing quickly, from $19.4M in '08 to $121.5M in '09, roughly 600% growth. It jumped another 500% to $597.5M in '10 and their 2011 revenue run rate is $941.7, roughly 150% growth. Although their run rate is $941.7 for 2011, revenue expectations are closer to $1.5B, which would be 250% growth from 2010.

Zynga has raised over $500M from New York City investors such as Union Square Ventures, who own 5.5%. Based on this IPO, it would be safe to assume that Zynga's valuation would allow USV to make back their entire fund $150 million fund from 2008.

Other investors include Foundry (6.1%), KPCB (11%) , IVP (6.1%), DST (5.8%), Avalon (6.1%), Andreessen Horowitz, Softbank, Google, Tiger Global, Reid Hoffman. The CEO of Zynga, Mark Pincus owns 16%.

While the company is performing very well, there are some significant risks to consider. The main issue is that Zynga continue to be very dependent on Facebook for distribution and monitization. Can Zynga find alternative avenues to lessen the dependency on Facebook?

The other challenge is that casual gaming in still a hits-driven business. Can they continue to produce great titles to retain existing players and entice new users to their games? Another challenge is that casual gaming has a very low barrier to entry. There are a lot of competitors who are developing good casual games: Angry Birds (Rovio Mobile), Crowdstar, Pocket Gems, Papaya Mobile, Disney (Playdom - $763M acquisition), EA (Playfish - $400M acquisition, PopCap, Firemint, Chillingo), DeNA (Ngmoco - $400M acquisition).

The evolution of gaming is mobile, which is not Zynga's core strength. Zynga needs to become dominate in the mobile gaming market and develop on platforms such as iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. While mobile games lessen the dependency on Facebook, there are still gate keepers in the mobile space including Apple, Google, Zong and Boku. Lastly Zynga is only four years old, which is still relatively young to be going IPO. If you look at the history of casual gaming, dominant players have come and gone, just look at the ups and downs of Atari, Sega and Capcom to name a few. The point being that remaining a dominant player in the casual gaming world is challenging and maintaining this level of growth, even tougher.

To summarize, Zynga is legitimate company that diminishes the argument of those who proclaim a tech bubble. The company faces many challenges but what is certain is that gaming is a huge market and Zynga has the opportunity to remain dominant.

Data in this story is taken from Zynga's S-1 filing and acquisition numbers on Crunchbase. This post reflects Shai Goldman's personal views and are not the views of his employer.