The San Francisco Chronicle has a profile on Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder of Yelp, and his story of getting a phone call from Steve Jobs when rumours flew that Google was interested in buying the company:
It was January 2010, and Google wanted to buy Yelp, the online, crowd-sourced review site.
On the phone, Jobs urged Stoppelman, who revered the Apple chief as a visionary, to “stay independent and not sell out to Google.” Jobs was not a fan of Google and had accused the search giant of stealing Apple’s smart-phone and tablet technology.
“At that point, we had already turned down Google,” Stoppelman said. “But Steve liked Yelp and wanted to make sure about Google. It was a moment where I said, ‘This is crazy. What just happened?’ “
Things haven’t been easy for Yelp, and they’ve had to reinvent the site a couple of times before finding a successful model. A recommended read.
