History
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 by Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, and a private Investor from Laguna Beach, who invested $3 million, $3 million, and $5 million respectively. 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 version of the site in 2008. A UK version was launched in 2009. Yelp later added international sites in Spain, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Australia. In 2008, Yelp's page view count overtook its predecessor and early rival, Citysearch. Revenues were approximately US$30 million for 2009, with $50 million expected in 2010.
On 17 December 2009, TechCrunch reported that Yelp was in advanced negotiations with Google to buy the company for more than $500 million. By 21 December, the same source was reporting that Yelp's CEO had rejected the Google offer.
On October 24, 2012 Yelp announced their acquisition of their european counterpart and competitor Qype.
Read more about this topic: Yelp, Inc.
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