Yelp grew from 6 million monthly visitors in 2007 to 16.5 million in 2008 and from 12 to 24 cities during the same time period. In 2010, Elevation Partners invested $100 million $75 million was spent on purchasing equity from employees and investors, while $25 million was invested in sales staff and expansion. It raised $15 million in funding from DAG Ventures in February 2008. By the summer of 2006, the site had one million monthly visitors. The number of reviewers on the site grew from 12,000 in 2005, to 100,000 in 2006. Yelp raised $5 million in funding in 2005 from Bessemer Venture Partners and $10 million in November 2006 from Benchmark Capital. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, "the site's popularity soared" after it was re-designed in late 2005. Usage data showed that users were not answering requests for referrals, but were using the "Real Reviews" feature, which allowed them to write reviews unsolicited. The idea was rejected by investors and did not attract users beyond the cofounders' friends and family. Īccording to Fortune, Yelp's initial email-based system was "convoluted". Stoppelman explained that they decided on "Yelp" for the company's name because "it was short, memorable, easy to spell, and was familiar with 'the help' and ' yellow pages'". MRL co-founder David Galbraith, who instigated the local services project based on user reviews, came up with the name "Yelp". Max Levchin, the co-founders' former colleague as founding chief technology officer of PayPal and founder of MRL Ventures, provided $1 million in Angel financing. Stoppelman and Simmons conceived the initial idea for Yelp as an email-based referral network, after Stoppelman caught the flu and had a difficult time finding an online recommendation for a local doctor. Two former PayPal employees, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, founded Yelp at a business incubator, MRL Ventures, in 2004. Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and CEO of Yelp The company's review system's reliability has also been affected by the submission of fake reviews by external users, such as false positive reviews submitted by a company to promote its own business or false negative reviews submitted about competing businesses – a practice sometimes known as " astroturfing", which the company has tried to combat in various ways.Ĭompany history (2004–present) Origins (2004–2009) There have also been complaints of aggressive and misleading tactics by some of its advertising sales representatives. The company has been accused of using unfair practices to raise revenue from the businesses that are reviewed on its site – e.g., by presenting more negative review information for companies that do not purchase its advertising services or by prominently featuring advertisements of the competitors of such non-paying companies or conversely by excluding negative reviews from companies' overall rating on the basis that the reviews "are not currently recommended". Over 50% of the company's audience has an annual household income of more than $100,000. In 2021, the company had 46 million unique visitors to its desktop webpages and 56.7 million unique visitors to its mobile sites. Īs of December 31, 2021, approximately 244.4 million reviews were available on its business listing pages. Yelp became a public company via an initial public offering in March 2012 and became profitable for the first time two years later. In 2009, it entered unsuccessful negotiations to be acquired by Google. From 2009 to 2012, Yelp expanded throughout Europe and Asia. By 2010, it had $30 million in revenue, and the website had published about 4.5 million crowd-sourced reviews. Yelp grew in usage and raised several rounds of funding in the following years. Yelp was founded in 2004 by former PayPal employees Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California. It also operates Yelp Guest Manager, a table reservation service. is an American company that develops the website and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. Local search, business ratings and reviews, online food delivery, local homeowner services
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