Meeting with Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp!

It’s official now, Jeremy is one smart, cool guy. He started Yelp after working at PayPal and befriending Max Levchin , creating the idea for yelp out of an incubator that Max started shortly after being acquired. Jenn , Dan and I talked with Jeremy about the tricks of local businesses - that is, that local businesses are still running completely offline. And they don’t really see the benefit of the internet; especially, not enough to invest much time in it.

Part of Yelp’s success with local business is that before they even talk to a business, they already have delivered value to the business on the internet. Even more, they figured out exactly how to deliver value for the business online. One of the most challenging things to the local businesses I’ve talked to is that they don’t have enough time to figure out what exactly to do online that can add value, and that uncertainty keeps them from doing anything at all.

The other side of local is that it’s just plain hard to get a successful network going, for content or networks that aren’t very pertinent someone in another city, country, etc. The local market is won (at least currently), city by city, local business by local business. At least not until the majority of local businesses understand how the internet can really help them, and easily understand what to do to achieve that. This is something not many internet companies get… yet.

Just something to think about…

But what Jeremy has accomplished with Yelp is really inspiring - multiple rounds of large $ , a really active user community, and a huge opportunity to grow in other cities! Thanks for meeting with us, Jeremy.

PS - for those of you engineers - Yelp is looking for Good Engineers , and they’re actually a solid business!