Prospectus Summary
PROSPECTUS SUMMARY This summary highlights information contained elsewhere in this prospectus and does not contain all of the information that you should consider in making your investment decision. Before investing in our Class A common stock, you should read the entire prospectus carefully, including the sections entitled “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and the related notes. Unless the context suggests otherwise, references in this prospectus to “Yelp,” the “Company,” “we,” “us” and “our” refer to Yelp Inc. and, where appropriate, its subsidiaries.Company Overview
Yelp connects people with great local businesses. Our platform features more than 22 million reviews of almost every type of local business, from restaurants, boutiques and salons to dentists, mechanics, plumbers and more. These reviews are written by people using Yelp to share their everyday local business experiences, giving voice to consumers and bringing “word of mouth” online. The information these reviews provide is valuable for consumers and businesses alike. Approximately 61 million unique visitors used our website, and our mobile application was used on more than 5 million unique mobile devices, on a monthly average basis during the quarter ended September 30, 2011. Businesses, both small and large, use our platform to engage with consumers at the critical moment when they are deciding where to spend their money. Our business revolves around three key constituencies: the contributors who write reviews, the consumers who read them and the local businesses that they describe.
Contributors. We foster and support vibrant communities of contributors in local markets across the United States, Canada and Europe. These contributors provide rich, firsthand information about local businesses, such as reviews, ratings and photos.
Consumers. Our platform is transforming the way people discover local businesses and is attracting a large audience of geographically and demographically diverse consumers. Every day, millions of consumers visit our website or use our mobile app to find great local businesses. Our strong brand and the quality of the review content on our platform have enabled us to attract this large audience with almost no traffic acquisition costs.
Local Businesses. Our platform provides local businesses with a variety of free and paid services that help them engage with consumers at the critical moment when they are deciding where to spend their money.
Powerful Network Effect. Our platform helps people find great local businesses to meet their everyday needs. As more people use our platform, more of them write reviews. Each review that a user contributes helps expand the breadth and depth of the content on our platform, in turn drawing in more consumers. This increase in consumer traffic improves our value proposition to local businesses as they seek low-cost, easy-to-use and effective advertising solutions to target a large number of intent-driven consumers.
Yelp Mobile. We help consumers make decisions on the go. Our mobile app was recognized in the Apple iPhone Hall of Fame for App Store Essentials and, as of November 10, 2011, was the #1 listed top free travel app in Apple’s App Store.
As our community has grown and our product offerings have expanded, we have seen significant growth in reviews, traffic, claimed local business locations and active local business accounts.
We generate revenue primarily from the sale of advertising on our website to local businesses and national brands that seek to reach our growing audience of consumers. In the first nine months of 2011, we generated $58.4 million in net revenue, representing 80% growth over the first nine months of 2010. In this same period, we generated a net loss of $7.6 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.1 million. For information on how we define and calculate number of contributed reviews, unique visitors, claimed local business locations, active local business accounts and adjusted EBITDA, and a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net loss, see “Selected Consolidated Financial and Other Data.”
Industry Overview
Every day, hundreds of millions of consumers make decisions about where to spend their money at local businesses. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in the United States alone, there are over 27 million local business locations, which we believe represents a multi-trillion dollar market for commerce. According to BIA/Kelsey, a market intelligence firm, local businesses are estimated to have spent $19.6 billion on online advertising and $113.6 billion on traditional offline advertising in 2010. We believe several secular trends will increasingly challenge the traditional ways in which local businesses have connected with consumers and will offer opportunities for solutions like ours.
Online Reviews are Gaining Credibility. With the growth of the Internet, online reviews have become a regularly relied-upon source of information. According to a 2011 survey of U.S. consumers conducted by Cone Communications, a public relations and marketing agency, 87% of respondents said that positive information they read online reinforced their decision to purchase a product or service and 64% of respondents said that they go online to search for customer or user reviews.
Local Advertising is Moving from Offline to Online. Over the past decade, the advertising market for local businesses has undergone rapid and fundamental changes. Consumers who at one time turned almost exclusively to the yellow pages, newspapers, magazines and other forms of offline media for information about local businesses are now increasingly relying on online resources. As consumers move online, local businesses are shifting their ad spending from traditional media sources to online advertising.
Mobile Connected Devices and Apps are Proliferating. Mobile devices provide an ideal platform for people to search for local businesses due to their ability to identify consumer location and provide all the benefits of digital content to consumers on the go. IDC, a market research firm, estimates that there will be over 1 billion smartphone shipments worldwide in 2015.
Why Consumers Choose Yelp
We believe consumers are drawn to our platform because Yelp reviews reflect recent, firsthand experiences from the community that help consumers find the best local businesses for their everyday needs. The Yelp platform is free and easy to use and has broad demographic appeal, serving local communities in the United States and internationally.
Yelp Reviews. Yelp reviews are core to the Yelp experience and a key point of differentiation from competing services. The passionate and detailed reviews on Yelp form a rich database from which consumers can draw relevant information about how and where to spend money locally.
Some of the distinguishing characteristics of Yelp reviews include:
Superior Search and Discovery. The combination of our proprietary search technology and our content enables consumers to receive especially relevant results for highly specific local searches.
Mobile. Our mobile app is an ideal way for people to discover great local businesses. It combines our reviews and other relevant information with knowledge of the consumer’s location in an integrated experience. Our mobile app also provides new ways to contribute content to our platform through features that let consumers “check-in” at local businesses and submit photos and “quick tips” directly from their smartphones.
Why Local Businesses Choose Yelp
Yelp serves local businesses by helping them get discovered, engage with potential customers and increase sales easily and affordably.
Broad and Targeted Reach. Our platform helps local businesses access a large audience of potential consumers at the specific moment when they are searching for a local business.
Focus on Demand Fulfillment. In contrast to other marketing solutions that only create awareness and attempt to generate consumer demand through online advertising and email marketing, we also help businesses fulfill demand by engaging with consumers who have already expressed demand for a specific product or service.
Easy, Flexible and Affordable Platform to Engage with Consumers. Our platform provides multiple free and paid advertising solutions to engage with consumers, including: free online business accounts; search advertising; and Yelp Deals. Within a matter of minutes, a business owner can set up a free online business account. With minimal additional effort, she can use our online advertising platform to engage with customers and track the effectiveness of ads and deals. We offer local businesses performance and impression-based advertising and the flexibility to pay on a monthly basis or through the purchase of three, six or 12-month advertising plans.
Our Strengths
We are one of the leading providers of information about local businesses. We believe that our success is largely attributable to the breadth, depth and overall quality of the more than 22 million reviews contributed to our platform. These reviews helped us draw approximately 61 million unique visitors to our website, on a monthly average basis for the quarter ended September 30, 2011. In addition to the reviews available on our platform, other key strengths contributing to our success include:
that a user contributes helps expand the breadth and depth of the content on our platform, in turn drawing in more consumers. This increase in consumer traffic improves our value proposition to local businesses as they seek low-cost, easy-to-use and effective advertising solutions to target a large number of intent-driven consumers.
Our Growth Strategy
We intend to grow our platform and our business by focusing on the following key growth strategies:
Growth in Existing Markets. Within existing markets, we will seek to increase the number of reviews, attract more users, increase usage of current users and attract more businesses.
Expand to New Geographic Markets. We are active in the United States, Canada and Europe, and we see a significant opportunity to continue expanding our footprint in new markets, both domestically and abroad. While we have not yet begun to sell advertising in our international markets, we intend to begin hiring an international sales force in 2012.
Platform Expansion. We plan to continue to innovate and introduce new products for our website and mobile app and to introduce our content and solutions on new platforms and distribution channels, such as automobile navigation systems, web-enabled televisions and voice-enabled mobile devices.
Enhance Monetization. We intend to grow our sales force and expand our portfolio of revenue-generating products in order to reach more businesses and increase the amount they spend on our advertising products.
Market Development
As of September 30, 2011, we were active in 43 Yelp markets in the United States and 22 Yelp markets internationally. In the markets we have entered, review growth and consumer activity are generally followed by revenue generated from local businesses. To illustrate the development of our markets as they scale, we highlight below our review and revenue metrics for three cohorts of Yelp markets in the United States: the Yelp markets that we launched in 2005-2006; the Yelp markets that we launched in 2007-2008; and the Yelp markets that we launched in 2009-2010.
Risks Associated with Our Business
Our business is subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including those highlighted in the section titled “Risk Factors” immediately following this prospectus summary. Some of these risks are:
Corporate Information
We were incorporated in Delaware on September 3, 2004 under the name Yelp, Inc. Our principal executive offices are located at 706 Mission Street, San Francisco, California 94103, and our telephone number is (415) 908-3801. Our website address is www.yelp.com. Information contained on or accessible through our website is not a part of this prospectus and should not be relied upon in determining whether to make an investment decision.
Yelp, Yelp Inc., the Yelp logo and other trade names, trademarks or service marks of Yelp appearing in this prospectus are the property of Yelp. Trade names, trademarks and service marks of other companies appearing in this prospectus are the property of their respective holders.