Groupon files to go public

The social buying site aims to raise $750 million. Here's how CEO Andrew Mason put it in a letter to potential shareholders:

We are pursuing models of reinvention that would not be possible without the critical mass of customers and merchants we have achieved. Groupon NOW, for example, allows customers to pull deals on demand for immediate redemption, and helps keep merchants bustling throughout the day. Expect us to make ambitious bets on our future that distract us from our current business. Some bets we'll get right, and others we'll get wrong, but we think it's the only way to continuously build disruptive products. We are unusual and we like it that way.

Not that it seems to matter these days, but Groupon, which is based in Chicago, lost $413 million in 2010 on revenue of $713 million. Below Mason talks to All Things Digital's Kara Swisher about the filing. Well, he almost talks to her...