![]() ![]() But recent months have also brought some harsh scrutiny in the form of several class-action lawsuits from small businesses who say the company’s sales representatives told them they’d get better reviews, or fewer bad ones, if they advertised with Yelp. Yelp turned it down, instead accepting a private equity investment from Elevation Partners. Yelp is a hive of social engagement that Google reportedly tried to acquire last year with a $500 million bid. Yelp has been particularly resilient through the pandemic and past recessions, in part, because of our horizontal platform.Since he helped found Yelp in 2004 amid the wreckage of the dot-com bust, Jeremy Stoppelman has relentlessly expanded its footprint from San Francisco, building communities of writers who have penned more than 10 million reviews of restaurants and other businesses across North America, Britain, and now, France. We saw that during the height of the pandemic when consumers spent more time at home, they tended to spend more on home services. One thing that’s always been true about Yelp is that our platform is broad-based so when consumer spending shifts, say from restaurants to something else, that other category is often captured somewhere else on Yelp. But it’s hard to predict whether the virus will truly fade into the background, much like other viruses or if it will have some new twists and turns that we didn’t expect. But we have been in kind of recovery mode for some time now, and certainly people are trying to get on with their lives and move past the virus. People are going to go to stores and restaurants less. If there’s a terrible variant, people get scared and huddle inside. Q: And how are you anticipating the surge in COVID cases to impact your business if Americans become more hesitant about going out to eat? How are you expecting the site to be impacted?įor restaurant and retail, we have seen continued recovery for Q1. But I do think more companies will embrace remote. Granted, it wasn’t until recently that video conferencing really provided a serious competitor to the traditional office. And that seems very inefficient and outdated. The drive on average for Americans is over half an hour each way, unpaid. Since industrialization, we’ve had one way of working: going into an office. It’s a better operating system for modern businesses. I’ve tweeted - perhaps controversially about this - but I believe that remote work is fundamentally a better way of working. That’s been our great adaptation and one that will extend far beyond pandemic. There’s more time for family and hobbies. ![]() Our employees are feeling really good about it. Surprisingly, perhaps, it’s been really successful for us. So we decided in 2020 that Yelp would be remote-first. How are you anticipating that’s going to affect the business? Q: The administration has said there could be about 100 million COVID-19 cases later this year. And he’s made a suggestion it will happen early summer, so we look forward to that. So we really think it’s time to bring it to the floor. When we look at it through our analysis, we think Senate Majority Leader Schumer has the votes to get it passed. And I think that’s very destructive to competition. One of the most egregious behaviors of Big Tech is when they have a competing property or product of their own, they interject and steer consumers away. Amy Klobuchar that we support, which is anti self-preferencing. And I think the general tone in Washington is a sea change from the past. There’s a number of bills in Congress right now. What do you think are the prospects of getting something done in Congress this year? Q: You’ve been an advocate of antitrust reform. ![]()
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