Yelp.com- Andrew Bohuslavizki

Andrew Bohuslavizki- Yelp was started out of MRL Ventures, an incubator Max Levchin and several former PayPal executives founded to develop Levchin's investment projects.[8] In late 2004, Levchin brought up the topic of Yellow Pages, which had been worked on since the incubator was started, with Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons. The two brainstormed over lunch about Jeremy's difficulty using the internet to find a local doctor, then pitched Levchin shortly after on building a site where users could ask friends for recommendations for local services by email.[8][9][10] That day Levchin agreed to invest $1 million in the project.[8] MRL co-founder, David Galbraith, who had instigated the research into a Yellow Pages product, came up with the name "Yelp."[11] The initial site was hard to use, and attracted few readers or reviewers.[10][12] In an "a-ha moment", Stoppelman and Simmons noticed that an increasing number of users were using a feature that allowed them to write reviews without being prompted.[9][10] They relaunched the site in February 2005 based on unsolicited review writing.[13] Yelp's early review community was grown in part through Yelp parties, which were held at local businesses looking to attract patrons.[14] The Yelp Elite, a category of super-users chosen by Yelp, was created in 2005 to reward the best reviewers.[15] The Yelp Elite were invited to parties and other special events.[12][16] The Yelp site had 12,000 reviewers in 2005, which grew to 100,000 in 2006.[12] In early 2007, Yelp introduced "People Love us on Yelp" stickers to raise awareness for Yelp.[17] By 2008, the website had fifteen million monthly visitors.[18][19] Three years after Yelp was founded, it was active in 24 cities. Website traffic almost double over a six month period starting in late 2007 and the number of reviews passed two million.[20] Yelp, Inc. raised $5 million in venture funding from Bessemer Venture Partners in October 2005, which was used to expand to New York City, Chicago and Boston.[12] Another $10 million was raised in October 2006 with Benchmark Capital,[21] followed by $15 million with DAG Ventures in February 2008.[22][23] In January 2010, Yelp raised $100 million in venture capital from Elevation Partners to fund an increase in sales staff.[24