Cheryl Rosner, the CEO of BuyWithMe, one of the largest Groupon clones, has stepped down.
Rosner is the former President of Expedia and CEO and President of TicketsNow, which sold to TicketMaster in 2008. She was brought on as CEO of BuyWithMe back in April when daily deals were starting to catch fire. (Groupon raised money at a humble $1.2 billion valuation that month.)
With such low barriers to entry, dozens of companies were scrambling to duplicate some of Groupon's success. BuyWithMe added Rosner and several other veteran executives, and raised $16 million in July.
Since then, however, the top two companies in the space, Groupon and LivingSocial, have left all of the clones in the dust. BuyWithMe is generally considered to be the third or fourth biggest player in daily deals, roughly even with Tippr.
Unfortunately, it appears to be a two-horse race:
BuyWithMe declined to comment. Guess Groupon, even with its simple technology and business model, isn't as easy to clone as everyone thought.
