The Singapore Business Review (SBR) issue 50 (Nov 12) covered an article about deal sites. With the rise of Groupon, many copycats had sprung around the world and Singapore too, had joined in the race. Beeconomic.com was the success story. Karl Chong started the the site which was eventually bought over by Groupon. Karl remained as the CEO of Groupon Singapore. Most of us would have only paid attention to this fairy tale and wished we were in Karl’s shoes. We are cultprits of survivorship bias – we did not see how many had failed for a successful Karl. I am heartened to see SBR report on the failure rate of Singapore’s deal sites. It was mentioned in the SBR article that 3 in 4 group buying sites went out of business in the last two years. The surprising fact – 84% of these failed sites had ceased operations ...