Gavin hello, and happy new year. Thank you for watching the show. We start the new year with topics that i think are heart and soul of the show. Ideas, innovations and solutions. We brought in trail blazers to kick off 2013. They may not be household names but theyve all come up with products and solutions that im sure youre familiar with. JeremyJeremy Stoppelman with yelp. Clara shih with required reading at Harvard Business school. And shes founder of hearsay social. And youre probably at one time a sharer of box. Com. We begin with Jeremy Stoppelman, the former Vice President of pay pal, and cofounder of yelp. Where did the name yelp come from . Yeah, we set out to create just this new internet site to finding new businesses. What would be a good name for that . What about yelp. Its like help, its like yellow pages, and its memorable. I had a bad idea. What was that . Yocal. Just a terrible name. It could be misspelled. But i thought being smart with y yockal. Gavin is it true that you were sick and you wanted the qualification of a good story. Is this the origins of yelp. Yes, i did come back to San Francisco, and i was trying to help start new internet companies. I was in a little incubator space. I spent time brain storming, and through the course of that i got sick. I just wanted to go see a general practitioner. I turned to google, doctors in San Francisco, hoping to find someone talking about a really good doctor. I really didnt find anything helpful. I ended up on insurance website and in a wasnt what i was looking for. That crystallized to me that there was a problem. How do you find goodbyes on the internet. We had the yellow pages but it had not turned into something helpful on the internet. Gavin yelp is so helpful in restaurant reviews. Its just started out as a general directory site. An automated version of the yellow pages with content to share. Explain the origins and thinking and evolution since the beginning. Sure, so it started with this idea that we wanted to help people find the best local businesses. And whats the way to find the best local business . You ask your friends for recommendation. Word of mouth. If we could find a way to capture word of mouth what is in peoples head. Bring it online and make it searchable that would make 2 it far more powerful than the yellow pages. We built a site and it was asking friend for recommendations. A q and a for service. There you could write your own review without asking the question and thats what resonated for people. Gavin to begin you didnt have a ton of traction until you started seeing things slow down, until that discovery on the writing of the review made more prominent, then you redesigned the site, sort of relaunched it . We saw that people were take taking to that feature. They wanted to share the information. We moved away from the questionanswer concept and it became a platform for people to have a voice to share recommendations of local businesses. That allowed others searching google to discover this content this word of mouth that was suddenly online. Gavin in the businesses included it just runs the gamut. Not just restaurant, but those doctors that you referred to, barbershops, whatever it may be. What is the Biggest Surprise in terms where there has been particular traction compared to what you thought the trajectory would be in 2005. But iin 2005 2005, 2006. I think the surprise is everyone wanted to review. People get addicted, passionate. It starts with restaurant and nightlife and then spills into everything with an draws. Sometimes politicians like yourself have turned up on the site with many reviews. But even little landmarks people might not have noticed before. There is the yoda near the the presidia has a review. Gavin not everyone likes to be reviewed. Politicians in particular. But restaurant and the question remains, who is doing the reviews . Folks who are doing the angry screen are they competitors trying to take someone down or owners trying to build something up. How do you vet the veracity of those reviews. Trust is so important in yelp, thats one of the reasons why were so successful. From the beginning we understand you got to find a way to protect against some of this behavior youre talking about. It cant be easy for someone to go and slam a competitor. From the very beginning we designed the review filter which analyzes all sorts of things to detect specific patterns and filter out suspicious reviews. As a result, the content you see on yelp is the most trusty, the most reliable that we could possibly have. I think thats what is really worked for consumers. When theyre browsing the site theyre reading experiences that others are having. When we walk in the door we set the expectations. Thats why the brand has come to mean something special. Gavin restaurant are still the dominant place. The unifier as it relates to these difference markets people tend to start there and then go down that list . You know, its an area of passion. Its a great way to get started with yelp. Often its the category that has enough reviews to be useful, especially to readers. Someone who discovers the site. When you think about it, if you sat down to write a review, you probably have 40, 50, 100 restaurant you could review off the top of your head. But how many doctors do you have to review . Hopefully its just one. Gavin thats right. Maybe two or three but hopefully not too many. As a result it takes longer before we get the depth in the category like doctors to be useful in a given city. Gavin what has been the most surprising part that have growth and trajectory. I imagine if you looked at your original Business Plan to today where is the deviation and boy this is surprising all of us. We didnt expect to find ourselves here. One of the mysteries in the very beginning or one of the things that investors were worried about, San Francisco different than the rest of the world . All the other cities in the country . We heard funny things, yeah San Francisco, yelp works there but new yorkers will never take to it. San franciscoers love to help people out, its the hippy tradition, we laughed but investors were really serious about that. But eventually as we grew and it started traveling it spread to other cities. So it all worked out in the sunshine we have to take a quick break but when we come back why jeremy believes a solid online and off line is key to the companys future. Honest. They know that im not bsing them with some hidden agenda, actually supporting one party or the other. When the democrats are wrong, they know that im going to be the first one to call them out. They can question whether im right, but i think that the audience gets that this guy, to the best of his ability, is trying to look out for us. [ ryon ] eating shrimp at red lobster is a fantastic experience. 30 shrimp for 11. 99. I cant imagine anything better. Youre getting a ton of shrimp and it tastes really good [ male announcer ] hurry in to red lobsters 30 shrimp for just 11. 99 choose any two of five savory shrimp selections like mango jalapeno shrimp and parmesan crunch shrimp. Two delicious shrimp selections on one plate all with salad and unlimited cheddar bay biscuits. 30 shrimp, just 11. 99 for a limited time. Wow, thats a lot of shrimp. Im ryon stewart im the ultimate shrimp lover, and i sea food differently. [ music ] gavin were back with Jeremy Stoppelman a drop out from Harvard Business school and enormous successful ceo of yelp. Youre known not to just invest in technology but invest in people. You have a remarkable sales force that goes out and explains to tens of millions of businesses what the opportunities are to participate. Was that always part of the onlineoff line construct thinking that came with you from the beginning . There are two sides to it. There is the community side, which from very early on we thought this off lineonline thing could be really powerful. Its not just a Community Online but its a group of people that really love to get together and swap tips in realtime. If youre a reviewer you have all these ideas. The reason why you join yelp is to talk share all these things you have found. Organizing events became a powerful thing, something that we now do in all of our markets. Gavin because thee least status of those participating. Those most into yelp become yelp elite. Then come to our events. Then the other side of it is of course sales. Reaching out and selling our ad products. Then we realized that Business Owners are overwhelmed with the online stuff. Business owners will spend all day in business and if youre cutting hair youre not thinking how to market yourself online. Its a consultive process. We have folks spending time on Business Owners, educating on what yelp can do for them, how it can help, and we built a large sales team as a result. Gavin do you think youve made these businesses better, stronger, or do you see some of the affects the unintended consequences of people taking down businesses because theyre clearly not operating at the level they should and they lack transparency and now theyre exposed. What is your sense . It has been enabling and strengthening endeavor . I think for consumers it has been an enormous boon. And as a result it has been a huge boost to local businesses. You think about before. If you want to go to a coffee shop and you didnt have yelp, youre taking a risk on something unfamiliar or you go to starbucks they market to you and its so familiar you know what youre going to get. But now you can rely on yelp, and you can turn to yelp and say what is a good coffee shop and believe what it says. Its not that commerce is going to these businesses where they might have trouble finding new customers. On top of that i think Customer Service is really the new marketing especially with all these online channels. The fact that people can have such a loud voice especially if you deliver incredible Customer Service. If youre delaying when they walk in the door, theyre going to take about it and your business will take off. Gavin you set out to involve people with google. There was a serious offer on the table. Decided not to go down that path. To hold on and finally go public and its been a spectacular run as a Public Company. In contrast to others who came out at the same time and havent done a well. What was the motivation not to sell when you knew you could make real big dollars, to take the risk and go to the public market. At a moment like that you take a look at your options and you try to figure out what do you want. For you the shareholder, the employees, and you know when it came down to brass tacks when it came down to the end it felt like we had this enormous opportunity ahead of us. And at the time we had probably, 10,000 or Something Like that local business advertisers in an oceanmaybe 2 million of them in the u. S. Alone that could have signed on. I felt like we were just starting spreading our wings. Why not be independent and chart our own course. Were all having a great time doing it. We were able to line up a partner to finance us at the time, and ultimately we did go public and it has been a pretty good outcome so far. Gavin how do you keep fresh . How do you innovating in this fish bowl of a Public Company. As it turns out any tech company is in this state of anxiety. What is coming next . Is a start up going to come around the corner and get me . Is a big Company Going to launch a product that i was ready or i wasnt looking for. What are the new ideas that i need to be on top of. The example would be the launch of the iphone. That took us from a place where there really was no mobile web. There was wap but it was a technology that nobody used. That immediately changed the game. And it created this enormous opportunity, and it was essentially ours to lose. We had this local content from the yelp site. Were able to bring it on to mobile. We had an app and now that has become an enormous asset for us. Its one of most interesting things, its growing so fast and mobile is really the future of a lot of our time when were spending it on the internet were going to be doing it most of the im time on mobile devices. Gavin do you say its the dominant transition in the tech world, the move from desk top to mobile. Are you seeing different behavior, patterns people utilizing differently than the desk top. Peak hits are weekdays. Democrat graphically there is probably something there. The people who like to adopt technology are probably on the smart phones before everybody else. But at this point smart phones are pretty mainstream. Its getting broader and broader. The traffic is growing a heck of a lot faster than what were seeing on desk top at this point. There are a lot of more people on mobile phone. Gavin where are you in three or four years besides all over the world, in asia for example. What do you see, do you see finding your way in Government Services and Holding Accountable the department of department of Motor Vehicles or the interaction we have with City Government state federal where do you see your users going with this platform. Some of that is already happening. If you take a look at the dmvs here in the San Francisco bay area there are a lot of reviews and insights that the government could take from that if they wanted to improve their processes or their Customer Service. If you dig deeper there are probably other Government Services that have been reviewed. I havent looked at all. Them, but its happening. As a general rule we dont try to direct people to specific categories, we give them a platform to be heard. We want to be supportive of that and it does happen. You were with pal pay pal with an allstar cast of folks, a great success. Youre a completely different guy now in this post world after all this success or the same guy in a different environment but struggling your way through trying to convince folks that nothing has necessarily changed. I dont think ive changed that much. Certainly ive developed skills that i didnt have before. Im out front a lot more than i was. In my pay pal days i was really involved deeply in engineering. I started as a software engineer. Now im doing a lot of media like today. Its been a change and a growing experience. But deep down, yeah, im the same ol person. Gavin jeremy, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Its been great. Gavin great. Gavin next youll meet a remarkable young woman who is a true pioneer in social media. Find out how 30yearold clara shih has put her skills to work to being the youngest member on the board of starbucks. I want to have that conversation. Lets talk about it. Really . Youre going to lay people off because now the government is going to help you fund your healthcare. Really . I want to have those conversations, not to be confrontational, but to understand what the other side is saying, and id like to arm our viewers with the ability to argue with their conservative uncle joe over the dinner table. Gavin chair chairclara shih is the ceo of hearsay social. Thank you for being on the show. Great to be here. Gavin so many of us are overwhelmed. Youve got just as individuals google plus now. Linkedin. Instagram, did you respond to twitter feed, facebook, you never got back to me. Many more issues, a grand cohesiveness. So you started a company hearsay to try to make that much easier process to manage. Thats right. Its a easier process. Its a technology that helps Companies Find all the social media pages and channels that already exist either through their own employees or agents or were that created by their customers. We help them to get legal compliant, protect the brand and turn those into authentic marketing and sales chants. Gavin arechannels. Gavin mymicrosoft following the model of apple seemingly this notion that the on and off line experience, what does that trend generally, or is it a trend at all or is it scatter shot isolated. I think it is a very important trend mace possible through mobile devices and through geoservices. The first wave of the internet we created thesee commerce channels and online experiences that were separate and distinct from our off line selves. Then came the phone. The phone became the bridge from our digital selves and the online selves. When people check facebook, they bring together those selves. And then when you add driving store behave that brings that in seamlessly. Gavin where do you see that going in the next few years. Is that an exponential quality to that in terms of the trendline or do you see it flattening . I think its exponential in the next few years because its still the early days. We see this through the manifestation of local store pages. You have got all these local store pages. Most chief marketing officers dont even know that they exist. They dont realize that these are opportunities to talk to customers where customers have already communicated to you and indicated they want to be engaged with. And you can give them product announcements, special deals. As we start to play into that more, that will become a big part that have seamlessness strategy. Gavin what do you say to folks individually, not just businesses, but to both that are overwhelmed because there are so many wonderful social media sites, so many wonderful places to go, to amplify a message get support and to be part of a community, restaurant now focusing on yelp, but every month there is something else. Youre not on that, you should be. There is a point of overwhelm. We talk about the notion that oneway conversations are dead and there has to be a feedback loop. You have to be engaged where your customers are. How do you do that without sacrificing the daytoday operations of a business . Is that something that increasingly companies are outsourcing . Or those as individuals need to outsource . How do we manage our own affairs in that respect let alone companies managing it themselves. You bring up a great point. I think first and foremost corporate usually has to spend some time prioritizing which network and media sites they want to enable. You cant boil the ocean. Especially if youre starting out you have to pick one or a few to d