By Mikal E. Belicove|For Entrepreneur.com|June 2, 2011

For those of you who are casual observers rather than intense market players, news that a cards-held-close-to-the-vest internet startup has filed papers for an initial public offering (IPO) with the SEC is cause for exploration. Especially if that company is Groupon, the website whose brand is synonymous with the daily deal.

By filing its S-1 registration statement and announcing last week its hopes to raise at least $750 million in an IPO, Groupon was obliged to publish a ton of details about its operation — information that the 3-year-old company has until now protected like a mother bear protects its cubs.

Details such as its number of employees (from 37 to 7,107 in two years); its subscriber base (from 152,203 in June 2009 to 83.1 million this March), participating merchants (212 in 2009, 56,781 this last quarter), Groupon coupons sold (28.1 million in just the first quarter of this year — in 140 categories of goods and services) and CEO compensation ($184,599 for Andrew Mason in 2010 has been reduced to $575 for all of 2011).

But there’s more: Groupon announces…

Continue reading Groupon By the Numbers: From Startup to IPO