Founded in 2004 by Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, the idea of Yelp was inspired by the vision of empowering individuals to make informed decisions about local businesses through the power of community-sourced reviews.
Since then, it's become one of the most used websites for finding reviews on restaurants, spas, gyms, etc. In fact, Google offered to buy Yelp for $550 million in 2005, but Stoppelman refused. This article has some cool facts and info on Yelp.
Yelp's alumni network has built some amazing companies. In this article we cover the top 31 companies that have raised a total of $8 billion according to Crunchbase data.
These companies are majorly focussed on SaaS, health and AI.
PS: Are you a Yelp employee/alum interested in getting your community together to invest in the community (and earn carry/other benefits along the way)? Or are you a member of another community that you think would make for an amazing startup investment community? 😉
Learn more about us and sign up for the waitlist here.
Affirm is a buy now, pay later service that allows merchants to provide flexible payment plans for their customers.
Affirm was founded in 2012 by Nathan Gettings (co-founder of Palantir), Max Levchin (co-founder of PayPal), Jeff Kaditz, and Alex Rampell.
As of 2023, Affirm has a market cap of $5.39 billion and over 2,071 employees. In April–June 2023, Affirm processed 2.04% of the total US e-commerce payment value, which was $5.5 billion.
Pylon is a real-time customer operations platform helping B2B companies scale customer success and support over Slack, Teams, and Discord.
Pylon's platform is built to help businesses scale a new way of operating. Businesses have started shifting away from email to chat platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Discord.
Pylon has raised a total of $3.3M. Their latest funding was raised on Jul 11, 2023 from a Seed round by General Catalyst.
Founded by Advith Chelikani, Marty Kausas, and Robert Eng, Pylon is based out of San Francisco, California.
Founder: Max Levchin
Yelp Role: Chairman of the Board of Directors
Capital Raised: $1.5B
Investors: GGV Capital
Stage: Public
Affirm is a financial technology services company that offers installment loans to consumers at the point of sale.
Founder: Jerry Ting
Yelp Role: Account Executive
Capital Raised: $155.6M
Investors: Amity Ventures
Stage: Series C
Evisort is the next generation of AI-powered contract intelligence.
Founder: Betsy (Filson) Field
Yelp Role: Graphic Designer
Capital Raised: $136.5M
Investors: CRV
Stage: Series D
Their mission: to increase health literacy around the world.
Founder: Francesco Agosti
Yelp Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $118M
Investors: a16z
Stage: Series B
The friendly crypto wallet built for DeFi & NFTs.
Founder: Arthur Jen
Yelp Role: Software Engineering
Capital Raised: $83M
Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Stage: Series B
Magic is a developer of SDK that integrates with applications to enable password-less Web3 onboarding and authentication.
Founder: Soups Ranjan
Yelp Role: Software Engineer - Data Mining
Capital Raised: $75.6M
Investors: FJ Labs
Stage: Series B
Sardine is fraud prevention and compliance software company for the digital economy.
Founder: Amanda Chanin
Yelp Role: Account Executive
Capital Raised: $42.7M
Investors: EBSCO Industries
Stage: Corporate Round
Cherry Street Energy operates as a renewable energy company that helps transform the energy marketplace.
Founder: Brad Menezes
Yelp Role: Lead Product Manager, Reservations & Delivery
Capital Raised: $37M
Investors: Aaron Levie
Stage: Series A
Superblocks is a programmable internal tooling platform for developers.
Founder: Max Levchin
Yelp Role: Chairman of the Board of Directors
Capital Raised: $23M
Investors: Founders Fund
Stage: Series B
Glow is a fertility app that crunches and analyzes vast quantities of data to help users take control of their reproductive health.
Founder: Amir Haghighat
Yelp Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $20M
Investors: Greylock
Stage: Series A
Baseten is a serverless backend that offers a fast way to build machine-learning-powered applications.
Founder: Mark Miyashita
Yelp Role: Software Engineer Intern/Part-Time
Capital Raised: $18M
Investors: Founders Fund
Stage: Series A
Supermove is a web-based software designed to help moving and storage companies.
Founder: Jasper Sone
Yelp Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $16.7M
Investors: Array Ventures
Stage: Series A
The Meeting Optimization Engine that makes business meetings smarter
Founder: Vishwas Prabhakara
Yelp Role: Vice President and General Manager, Yelp Reservations and Nowait
Capital Raised: $12.1M
Investors: Khosla Ventures
Stage: Series A
Honey Homes is a home maintenance firm that offers house maintenance and related services.
Founder: Ben Bleikamp, Bryan Byrne
Yelp Role: Product Manager, Director of Business & Revenue Products
Capital Raised: $10.5M
Investors: Founders Fund
Stage: Series A
Cased provides a modern terminal for teams and a platform for production work.
Founder: Alex Alioto
Yelp Role: Senior National Franchise Manager
Capital Raised: $10M
Investors: Talent Resources Ventures.
Stage: Seed
Whimstay is the leading vacation rental marketplace for travelers looking to book last-minute stays at a great value.
Founder: Avi Goren
Yelp Role: Senior Account Executive
Capital Raised: $9.7M
Investors: CEAS Investments
Stage: Series A
Marqii is a digital operations platform that empowers hospitality businesses to take control of their online information, menus and reviews.
Founder: Scott Clark
Yelp Role: Software Engineer and Team Lead
Capital Raised: $8.7M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Acquired by Intel
SigOpt’s API tunes the model’s parameters through state-of-the-art Bayesian optimization.
Founder: James Altschuler
Yelp Role: Senior Account Executive
Capital Raised: $8.5M
Investors: GFT Ventures
Stage: Series A
Qortex is the pioneer of on-stream, scalable in-video experiences for the web and CTV, powered by AI.
Founder: Alex Kracov
Yelp Role: Junior Account Executive
Capital Raised: $6.5M
Investors: Craft Ventures
Stage: Seed
Dock is a tool to help you create collaborative workspaces for prospects, customers, investors, and partners.
Founder: Kyle Killion
Yelp Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $6M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Series A
Suiteness is a free-to-join hotel booking website connecting hotel rooms and suites.
Founder: Jonathan Kau
Yelp Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $5M
Investors: South Park Commons
Stage: Seed
Satsuma is a reliable blockchain indexing service for web3 engineering teams.
Founder: Noah Gilmore, Yuxin Zhu
Yelp Role: Software Engineers
Capital Raised: $4.2M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed
Replo is a visual CMS that enables building e commerce development.
Founder: Keaton W.
Yelp Role: National Sales - Elite Account Director
Capital Raised: $4M
Investors: Brainstorm Ventures
Stage: Seed
Forge is a platform that empowers hourly workforces to work on-demand while giving their employers the tools needed to run their businesses. Acquired by WorkJam.
Founder: Aakash Adesara
Yelp Role: Engineer (Android)
Capital Raised: $3.4M
Investors: Pear Ventures
Stage: Seed
SellScale is a sales and marketing software that uses artificial intelligence to generate better marketing emails.
Founder: Marty Kausas
Yelp Role: Software Engineering Intern
Capital Raised: $3.3M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed
Pylon is a real-time customer operations platform helping B2B companies scale customer success and support over Slack, Teams, and Discord.
Founder: Prithvi Narasimhan
Yelp Role: Software Engineer (Intern)
Capital Raised: $2.1M
Investors: Pear Ventures
Stage: Seed
Sympto Health is an early stage software company re-imagining the relationship between nurses and their patients.
Founder: Ben Labra
Yelp Role: Senior Account Executive
Capital Raised: $2M
Investors: New Age Capital
Stage: Seed
Gesture is a modernized gifting platform, built to easily send custom gifts, faster than sending a Venmo.
Founder: Zain Manji
Yelp Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $1.9M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed
Fiix sends licensed, expert mechanics to your home or office to repair your car within the same day.
Founder: Joseph Lai
Yelp Role: Senior Product Manager - Mobile
Capital Raised: $1.2M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Pre-Seed
Neon delivers ready-to-eat meals from restaurants to homes.
Founder: Denis O'Dwyer
Yelp Role: Vice President of Local Sales
Capital Raised: $1.1M
Investors: Hedgewood
Stage: Seed
Wide Open Spaces is an online platform that provides hunting and fishing enthusiasts with content, community, and commerce.