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Stoppelman, co-founder and CEO of online city guide Yelp, intends to increase his foothold in Europe, with the launching pad to be based in Dublin, Southern Ireland.
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Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and CEO of Yelp, has announced his plans to open the European headquarters for Yelp, the online local “urban guide, ” in the Southern Irish city of Dublin creating more than 100 jobs in the process.
Stoppelman established Yelp in 2004, under the motto of connecting customers with local businesses, through the publishing of word-of-mouth reviews and listings on their website- a formula that has worked very well for the website, drawing more than 130 million unique visitors to the website in 2013, with coverage reaching from Argentina to New Zealand.
The Yelp service is already on offer in a number of European countries, after the acquisition of Qype, its largest European rival, in 2012, which they followed up by taking over the online reservation company SeatMe the following year.
Since its foundation in 2004, Yelp Inc. Succeeded in conscripting a total of $130 million in venture finance as a privately held company, before going public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012.
Announcing his plans to expand Yelp’s international operations throughout Europe from their new offices in Dublin Jeremy Stoppleman went on to explain that the decision to choose Eire as their base was drawn from the established fact that the country provides fantastic access to multiple language capabilities from a tech savvy and educated population, who have already provided a warm welcome and a pleasant working environment for existing Yelp employees that have already relocated.
According to Stoppelman, the hundred new jobs created to get Yelp’s European operation of the ground will largely be based around sales, finance and account management, although the company will be establishing a product engineering department in the city.
Jeremy Stoppelman confirmed his decision to choose Dublin, during a visit from officials from Eire’s Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Enda Kenny during his trade mission to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where he met with representatives with most of the leading global high-tech companies, some of whom have a presence in Southern Ireland, including Google, Facebook and Twitter.
In 2009 Yelp were the subject of a takeover offer from Google, believed to be in the region of $500 million, which brought another, reportedly unsolicited offer for the company, this time from Yahoo, and for almost double Google’s offer, at least according to rumors circulating at that time in the industry.
Eventually, either deal failed to materialize after Stoppelman and his partner Russel Simmons, decided to go it alone, later successfully floating the company on the New York Stick Exchange. Where it now has a current value of $4.3 billion.
Jeremy Stoppelman graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois in 1999.
Stoppelman began his professional career working with the now defunct cable internet service provider @Home Network, later moving to X.com, which later evolved to become the giant payment processing giant PayPal. Jeremy rose g to the rank of Vice President in charge of Engineering at PayPal, before leaving to attend Harvard Business School.
It was at his time at PayPal that Jeremy Stoppelman formed some of most his significant business connections, primarily with renowned internet entrepreneur Max Levchin, who was one of the first investors, as well as Russel Simmons, his founding partner in Yelp.
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