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Yelp, Inc. is a company that operates yelp.com, a social networking, user review, and local search web site. Yelp.com has more than 54 million monthly unique visitors as of late 2010.
Yelp was one of three projects, including Adzaar and Slide, to come out of the San Francisco incubator, MRL Ventures. The project arose out of research into the local services market by David Galbraith, who worked with Jeremy Stoppelman on the early stages of the project. Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, both of whom were early software engineering employees at PayPal, spun the service off as a separate company. After an aborted start as an email recommendation service, Yelp launched its namesake web site into the San Francisco market in October 2004. The company received $6 million in early funding from venture capital firms Mission Street, led by another former Paypal-er Max Levchin, and Bessemer Venture Partners. Additional investments were made in the amounts of $3 million by Benchmark Capital in 2006 by DAG Ventures ($3 million) and a private Investor from Laguna Beach ($5 million) in 2008. Yelp expanded from its San Francisco roots to open an east coast office in Manhattan in the first half of 2008 and by introducing a Canadian-focused version of the site in 2008. Yelp now has international sites in Spain, France, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. As of 2008, Yelp's page view count overtook its predecessor and early rival, Citysearch. Revenues were approximately US$30 million for 2009, with $50 million to be expected in 2010.
On December 17, 2009, TechCrunch reported that Yelp was in advanced negotiations with Google to buy the company for more than $500 million. By December 21, the same source was reporting that Yelp's CEO had rejected the Google offer. Yelp has been identified as a possible candidate for an IPO by 2013.
Source: Wikipedia
Yelp was one of three projects, including Adzaar and Slide, to come out of the San Francisco incubator, MRL Ventures. The project arose out of research into the local services market by David Galbraith, who worked with Jeremy Stoppelman on the early stages of the project. Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, both of whom were early software engineering employees at PayPal, spun the service off as a separate company. After an aborted start as an email recommendation service, Yelp launched its namesake web site into the San Francisco market in October 2004. The company received $6 million in early funding from venture capital firms Mission Street, led by another former Paypal-er Max Levchin, and Bessemer Venture Partners. Additional investments were made in the amounts of $3 million by Benchmark Capital in 2006 by DAG Ventures ($3 million) and a private Investor from Laguna Beach ($5 million) in 2008. Yelp expanded from its San Francisco roots to open an east coast office in Manhattan in the first half of 2008 and by introducing a Canadian-focused version of the site in 2008. Yelp now has international sites in Spain, France, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. As of 2008, Yelp's page view count overtook its predecessor and early rival, Citysearch. Revenues were approximately US$30 million for 2009, with $50 million to be expected in 2010.
On December 17, 2009, TechCrunch reported that Yelp was in advanced negotiations with Google to buy the company for more than $500 million. By December 21, the same source was reporting that Yelp's CEO had rejected the Google offer. Yelp has been identified as a possible candidate for an IPO by 2013.
Source: Wikipedia