![]() ![]() That got him thinking: what if there was a way to capture what others would think about a given service (preferably in their proximity) and bring that online? Unfortunately, all the search results either produced intrusive offers or were totally unrelated to his problem. The final spark came when, one day, Stoppelman fell sick and needed to see a doctor. When they scanned other older media verticals, they saw that the Yellow Pages was not yet impacted by the advent of the internet. Levchin, knowing how talented the guys are, granted them $1 million in funding to develop any idea they would feel lucrative enough.Īt the time, Craigslist was starting to radically transform the newspaper industry by snatching away their classifieds business. They got in touch with Max Levchin, one of PayPal’s co-founders who had launched a startup incubator, to work on a new idea. Simmons dabbled in a new startup idea while Stoppelman pursued an MBA at Harvard.Ī year into their new endeavors, they both decided to partner up again. In the summer of 2003, a year after PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion, both of them decided it was time to move on. Two-thirds of black and Latino businesses didn't receive any of it, the survey found.Ī separate survey by the National Federation of Independent Business found that 61% of small businesses overall received PPP funding.Yelp, headquartered in San Francisco, California, was founded in 2004 by Jeremy Stoppelman (CEO) and Russel Simmons.īoth founders conducted their college studies at the University of Illinois where they graduated with a degree in Computer Science.Īfter graduating from college, both of them ended up working as software engineers at PayPal – alongside the likes of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, or David Sacks.Īt PayPal, both Stoppelman and Simmons rose to leadership positions, leading large engineering teams in their mid-twenties. Though businesses across virtually every sector lost money during the shutdowns, minority business owners may have had a harder time getting access to Paycheck Protection Loans given by the government to help.Ī survey of 500 minority small-business owners conducted by the Global Strategy Group found that just 12% of PPP loan applicants received the full assistance they requested after the government began administering a second round of funding. ![]() Still, more assistance is needed for small businesses reeling from the coronavirus pandemic that forced many shops, stores and restaurants to close as a precaution against COVID-19 spreading among workers and customers. ![]() Some businesses are getting a much-needed boost because of it. There has been a surge of interest in black-owned businesses in June, according to Google search trend data. Yelp said it will donate $500,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and match donations from employees who contribute money to other black-serving causes. Shopping at black-owned businesses is one of the ways allies can support the Black Lives Matter movement, which seeks to create a world where black people have the social, economic and political power to thrive, according to the movement's official website. The company has put together a collection of black-owned businesses across the country for users to support. ![]()
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