After sidestepping a $6 billion takeover from Google last year, Groupon has officially decided to go public: it's looking to raise $750 million in an initial offering. Earlier this year, as Dealbook notes, the company was estimated at an enormous $25 billion, which probably made it easy to get underwriters Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse on board for the filing.

Today, CEO Andrew Mason spoke at News Corp's D9 tech conference--about everything but the IPO. He did however, write an "unorthodox" first-person letter with the filing, which The Atlantic's Nicholas Jackson has reproduced in full. Here's an excerpt of the section entitled "We are unusual and we like it that way":

We want the time people spend with Groupon to be memorable. Life is too short to be a boring company. Whether it's with a deal for something unusual, such as fire dancing classes, or a marketing campaign such as Grouspawn(1), we seek to create experiences for our customers that make today different enough from yesterday to justify getting out of bed.

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Erik Hayden