San Francisco-based local reviews site Yelp has just raised $10 million in funding from Benchmark. With more than 1 million users, a 200 percent increase since January, and currently only available in the U.S, Yelp is a service by the founders of PayPal. I last mentioned Yelp in my 33 social networks list. With 30 employees, Yelp previously raised $6 million from Bessemer Venture Partners.
The idea behind Yelp is to get out a lot of local user-generated content, with reviews of everything from restaurants to dentists. Yelp is popular mostly in big cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and of course its hometown San Francisco. While it isn’t yet making money, on the financial side it plans to compete with the Yellow Pages and take a chunk of its $14 billion advertising revenue.
Peter Fenton, who very recently joint Benchmark and will soon be joining Yelp’s board, is the major person behind this investment. Benchmark is also known for its other ventures in Bebo, Pageflakes, and Metacafe.
[tags]Yelp, Investments, Startups[/tags]
