Jeremy Stoppelman has never been afraid of a fight. As co-founder and CEO of pioneering reviews site Yelp, he spent over a decade warring with tech titan Google in a bid to keep his company alive.
That same relentless spirit has defined his entire career. From the early days of PayPal to taking on Big Tech monopolies, Stoppelman has consistently overcome the odds to find success. He also happens to be part of the so-called "PayPal Mafia" – a group of former PayPal executives who spawned several blockbuster tech companies.
As Stoppelman continues his legal crusade against Google‘s alleged anti-competitive practices, his legacy as an indefatigable entrepreneur seems assured. But there‘s much more to his fascinating story than these recent headlines…
The Stoppelman Timeline
Before diving deeper, let‘s review the key milestones in Stoppelman‘s career so far:
- 1999 – Graduates college and joins engineering team at @Home Network
- 1999 – Leaves @Home Network after 4 months to join innovative startup X.com
- 2000 – X.com merges with Confinity to form PayPal, Stoppelman becomes VP Engineering
- 2002 – PayPal sold to eBay for $1.5 billion, earns Stoppelman millions
- 2002-2004 – Briefly leaves Silicon Valley to attend Harvard Business School
- 2004 – Founds Yelp with former PayPal colleague Russel Simmons
- 2004-2011 – Yelp grows rapidly to 16+ million monthly visitors
- 2012 – Yelp goes public in a $217 million IPO at $15 per share
- 2016 – After losing an EU antitrust case, Yelp departs Europe
- 2023 – Yelp receives over 200 million monthly visitors globally
Armed with this high-level overview, let‘s rewind and look at Stoppelman‘s early days…
Early Life and Education
Born November 10, 1977 in Arlington, Virginia, Jeremy Stoppelman was immersed in academia from a young age. His father John worked as a security lawyer while mother Lynn was an English teacher.
Stoppelman took an early interest in technology – learning coding and investing in stocks all before age 15. He also graduated from the prestigious Langley High School located close to Washington D.C.
In 1999 Stoppelman gained a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But he didn‘t stick around after graduation…
The PayPal Rocket Ship
Stoppelman‘s first role after college was an engineering job at early internet company @Home Network. However he left just 4 months later to join an ambitious startup called X.com.
Little did he know X.com was founded by future billionaire Elon Musk. Even less did Stoppelman anticipate the company would rebrand just one year later as PayPal and eventually sell to eBay for $1.5 billion.
But that‘s exactly what transpired. Rapidly rising to VP of Engineering, Stoppelman helped build the payments innovation now known simply as PayPal.
In the process he befriended fellow execs like Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman and David Sacks – a cohort that became known as the PayPal Mafia.
While the young engineers didn‘t know it at the time, their individual impacts on tech would transform Silicon Valley forever.
For Stoppelman personally, his central role at PayPal yielded enough wealth that he briefly left California in 2002 to attend the prestigious Harvard Business School.
But the entrepreneur couldn‘t stay away from Silicon Valley for long…
The Dawn of Yelp
While studying on the East Coast in 2004, the ambitions Startpelman harbored back at PayPal came flooding back.
Catching a bad case of the flu one winter, Stoppelman struggled to find recommendations for a good local doctor. He realized there was no centralized platform for discovering reliable local businesses.
Sensing a market opportunity, Stoppelman linked up with former colleague Russel Simmons and dipped into their PayPal earnings. The goal – build a revolutionary recommendations engine focused specifically on local services.
With additional funding from early PayPal investor Max Levchin, Stoppelman founded Yelp in 2004 to achieve that vision.
The premise was simple yet powerful. Yelp would let local community members exchange reviews and recommendations on nearby restaurants, doctors, mechanics – anything really. This harnessed genuine word-of-mouth opinions to identify both popular and little-known local gems.
It would take nearly a decade for Yelp to enter the mainstream. But fueled by Stoppelman‘s product intuition, the platform attracted engaged local communities organically:
Year Unique Visitors
2004 1 million
2008 12 million
2011 66 million
2012 84 million
2023 200+ millionFar beyond just a reviews site, Stoppelman envisaged Yelp as a rich source of local insights that people would consult daily.
“On mobile, what are the core apps? It’s basically messaging, mapping, and review data.” – Jeremy Stoppelman
His vision was quickly becoming reality. By empowering local patrons and businesses to transact more effectively, Yelp pioneered an entirely new utility.
And Stoppelman was just getting started…
The Wrath of Google
Despite meteoric early growth, Yelp soon confronted an existential threat – Google. As Google expanded into providing reviews and recommendations directly, tensions erupted.
Stoppelman publicly accused Google of scraping Yelp‘s content rather than referring traffic back. He also alleged Google prioritized its own competing services by manipulating search rankings – suppressing rivals like Yelp.
Thus began over a decade of bitter legal disputes across America and Europe. Stoppelman repeatedly testified that Google abused its dominance in services like search to undermine fair competition and consumer choice.
"There are people out there who will talk about Google, but they are few and far between. It speaks to Google’s power." – Jeremy Stoppelman
Google of course denied these monopolization allegations. Nonetheless in 2016 European Union regulators sided with Google – finding no evidence of anti-competitive actions. In response, a defiant Stoppelman immediately pulled all Yelp operations from Europe.
While that remains his biggest setback to date, Stoppelman continues appealing decisions and rallying regulators to Google‘s threat. Now 16 years in, the Yelp vs Google rivalry shows no signs of slowing.
Indeed, if anyone has the resilience to confront Big Tech, it might just be Jeremy Stoppelman.
Yelp Financials and Valuation
Year Revenue Net Loss/Profit Employees Valuation
2005 $1 million -$1 million 20 -
2010 $47 million -$7 million 450 $100 million
2016 $713 million $40 million 5000 $3.35 billion
2022 $1.03 billion $14 million 4400 $2.47 billionThe Relentless Innovator
Stepping back, it’s clear Stoppelman’s indefatigable nature has defined his varied career.
Long before battling Google, Stoppelman displayed visionary thinking at PayPal – identifying the online payments space years before payments became ubiquitous globally.
Again at Yelp, he foresaw the value of localized recommendations and reviews back in 2004 – single-handedly spawning an entire category online.
“Choose something you are passionate about – or a pain point that has affected you and that you feel really needs to be changed.” – Jeremy Stoppelman
And time after time, despite the odds stacked against his smaller company, Stoppelman repeatedly confronts external threats rather than compromising his beliefs.
Indeed, while his name doesn’t carry the same prestige as PayPal Mafia peers like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, one could argue Jeremy Stoppelman’s impact has been similarly profound. Between PayPal and Yelp, few entrepreneurs can claim two multi-billion dollar tech innovations under their belts.
Personal Life
Amazingly despite all his business exploits, Jeremy Stoppelman has preserved a rather private personal life. Little is publicly known about his wife and family, other than he has a daughter.
Even the location of his San Francisco Bay Area residence isn‘t widely reported – quite a feat for such a high profile founder. Though known to be an avid reader and music fan, Stoppelman otherwise keeps personal matters tightly guarded.
Given the intense demands of running Yelp while simultaneously waging legal warfare across two continents, one imagines little time remains for hobbies or leisure. Perhaps we’ll learn more about the intriguing man behind Yelp if, as some reports suggest, he eventually opts to sell the company and enter his next chapter.
Until then however, it seems Jeremy Stoppelman still has too much resilience left not to come out swinging. Based on his track record so far, we certainly haven’t heard the last from this indefatigable innovator.