Yelp, a crowd-sourced local business review and social networking site, was founded by two former PayPal employees: Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons. The idea for Yelp was an email-based system for referring friends to local businesses.
Yelp was first funded by the co-founders' former colleague and founder of MRL Ventures, Max Levchin. He provided $1 million in initial funding. It was MRL co-founder David Galbraith who came up with the name "Yelp". The service has had a rough start until a redesign in 2005 made the site's popularity soared.
Yelp is primarily active in big and major metropolitan regions, with pages devoted to individual locations. Users can submit a review on their products or services using its rating system, and enter discussions.
