LivingSocial was founded in 2008 by four colleagues, Tim O’Shaughnessy, Eddie Frederick, Aaron Batalion, and Valeriy Aleksenko. They had been together at Revolution Health, and then they ventured out on their own with LivingSocial. LivingSocial’s main competitor is Groupon, but at LivingSocial there is no minimum number of subscribers needed in order to receive the discount. Many of LivingSocial’s coupons are for the usual restaurants and spas, but they are experimenting with more experiential type deals. “We sold a lot of tickets for the Spy Museum in Washington,” says O’Shaughnessy, “and we’ve also worked with an indoor skydiving company. They turn on a jet engine fan that shoots you through a vertical tube.”
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