Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said his firm would likely go public over the next year or so but had not yet started the process, as it continues to grow its mobile following.
“We haven’t started the process, we haven’t chosen bankers, it’s something we’re going to pass through but we’ve been at this for years,” he told the audience at Mobile Beat 2011 in San Francisco on Wednesday, noting that Yelp was in it for the long haul. “We’ll go public at some point, maybe in the next year or so, but we’re not rushing,” he said.
Stoppelman said it had been the iPhone that had truly mobilized Yelp onto its current handheld path, noting “The Yelp app on the iPhone fundamentally changed our business.” And with Android now contributing to Yelp’s mobile success, Stoppelman said it was hard to find a smartphone user who didn’t have the app.
While many had downloaded Yelp to their devices, however, Stoppelman claimed it was only around 4.5 million app users who currently drove 35% of all search traffic for Yelp.
The company is committed to creating an ever stronger mobile business model, however, with Stoppelman even going as far as to claim a mobile user was “more valuable” and had a “tighter relationship” with Yelp.
“We live and die on what users are saying about our local businesses,” declared Stoppelman as a Segway into Yelp Check-ins, which he described as “another way to contribute, another piece of data which builds trust on Yelp for reviewers.”
But while a lot of the Yelp community is apparently “using and loving” the check-in service, Stoppelman said it took a sustained effort to make the mobile deals platform successful, with the onus being on coming up with incredible deals. “Consumers are pretty smart,” he added.
Stoppelman went on to discuss how important international expansion was to the online reviews outfit, and said the first stage of this global rollout would be predominantly in Europe.
