11 ms·
Yelp Posts Q4 Loss, CFO Resigns
- ratfacemcgee 11y agoYelp, Zenefits and Paypal. What is going on?
- meritt 11y agohttp://avc.com/2016/01/ch-ch-ch-ch-changes/ http://avc.com/2016/01/ch-ch-ch-ch-changes/
- smt88 11y agoYelp: Very hard to monetize. Because they chose a model where the businesses who pay them are also the businesses being reviewed, they've given themselves a conflict of interest. They've chosen to sell their integrity, which makes their star ratings less reliable/valuable, which makes users trust them less, which makes businesses want to advertise less. It's a vicious cycle. Zenefits: Broke the law. Also an insanely ambitious, brilliant, risky business model. PayPal: Hated by most people/customers. Can't wait until they go out of business completely.
- TrevorJ 11y agoB-b-but according the paypal's shiney new superbowl ad, paypal is 'new money'.
- smegel 11y ago> Because they chose a model where the businesses who pay them are also the businesses being reviewed Crazy when you think about it. > PayPal: Hated by most people/customers. I didn't understand this until recently when I tried to "instant" transfer a few hundred bucks to a friend and was caught up in a 3 day "review" process where I was interrogated about the "reason" for the transfer. Never again!
- Gibbon1 11y ago>> Because they chose a model where the businesses who pay them are also the businesses being reviewed > Crazy when you think about it. Who do those guys think they are, Moody's!!!?
- finance-geek 11y ago@Gibbon1 this is a pretty insightful comment. Luckily for Moody's, they made themselves part of an intricate industrial structure where their ratings drive large parts of the industry (e.g., investment guidelines, lending, etc.)
- kalleboo 11y agoThe payment review stuff happens with regular banks as well. It's due to vague money laundering legislation where banks have to act as police but have no guidelines or rules. A lot of the other things people hate PayPal for is due to their reliance on the credit card companies and their own regulations. I don't say this to excuse PayPal, but to explain why ant competitor thst shows up will have the same problem. Just look at the Bitcoin exchanges - they should have the most leeway yet people aren't happy with them either due to stringent KYC rules.
- Apocryphon 11y agoMaybe they're going to launch a startup together.
- hasenj 11y agoCould it perhaps be related to the recent LinkedIn plunge? http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-earnings-q4-2016-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-earnings-q4-2016-2
- spicyj 11y agoExecutive departures are normally planned months in advance, not 3 days.
- randycupertino 11y agoYes and Feb is ripe for C level exec changes... they get through the holidays, use January to firm up their new plans and put their replacements into order and then boom- Feb let it hit the press.
- grubles 11y ago"Pop." https://twitter.com/djcapelis/status/696869166960095232 https://twitter.com/djcapelis/status/696869166960095232
- feld 11y agoHe was probably told he has to give the CEO a 5 star rating or he would be fired. edit: i have no idea if they have an internal person-rating system based on yelp, but i hope so As far as the recent resignations, it's probably New Years resolutions when people realize they value time over money.
- justinzollars 11y agoTHERE MUST BE MORE TO THIS STORY. -recent paranoid end is nigh HN user.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoWell, come on. A few days ago 3 news stories about companies losing stock value. Now, 3 stories in a row about company executives resigning. What's going on in the Valley? :O.
- frandroid 11y agoThe bubble is burs* * * slap * slap*
- alexkavon 11y agoI've decided too keep this opinion to myself. So a year from now when the bubble has burst, I'll get to lay down a nice "told you so" to the world. And you can rise with me as my second in command and we will rule a post bubble world, the carnage of the bursted bubble landscape will be ours till the end of time!
- chvid 11y agoliquidity event ... :-o
- jbpetersen 11y agoHow often does this stuff normally happen and how much is it the hot thing to report on this week?
- nostrademons 11y agoWhen a story gets hot on HN it tends to lead to other stories like it being upvoted. You should've seen it when the whole front page was about Erlang. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia
- 11y ago
- danso 11y agoYelp in 2014 Q4 had revenue $110M and a profit of $32.7M [1]. Its revenue for Q4 2015 is $154M and a loss of $22.2M [2]. I see that there is an income tax expense of $20.3M in 2015 and other depreciation costs...but is this change in profit with growth in revenue typical? [1] http://www.yelp-ir.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=250809&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2014264 http://www.yelp-ir.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=250809&p=irol-newsArt... [2] http://www.yelp-ir.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=250809&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2136455 http://www.yelp-ir.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=250809&p=irol-newsArt...
- dopamean 11y agoI wonder if there was something they delayed accounting for in Q4 of 2014 that allowed them to have that profit. What do the numbers look like for the quarters in between?
- iaw 11y agoSeems likely to me as well. Hopefully it was GAAP compliant otherwise he may be in some trouble.
- fspeech 11y agoThat kind of swing is unlikely in this line of business. Checking the 8k shows that Yelp had a one-time writeup of tax assets in 2014. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1345016/000114420415006290/v400516_ex99-1.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1345016/0001144204150...
- Steko 11y agoI wonder when they intentionally crippled their mobile website because that's when I uninstalled their app.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- timr 11y agoThis is really the only interesting question regarding the CFO's resignation. The CFO isn't responsible for revenue growth, but would be on the hook for something like a bunch of previous quarters' botched taxes. That said, it could just be that Krolik resigned to do something else. It's not like he was fired and kicked out of the office -- he's given notice, and they're looking for a replacement.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jorgecurio 11y agoWhat do you predict will happen to Yelp this year?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- SatoshiRoberts 11y agoThey will be acquired by Twitter or AOL/verizon
- DonHopkins 11y agoFoursquare will buy them, to get back into the Foursquare business.
- rburhum 11y agoThis is one of those moments where I wish there was a nice way to express sarcasm. I hope your comment was meant to be delivered with it. A lot of it.
- glibgil 11y agoThere is a good way. He expressed it, you picked up on it, but you just don't trust the rest of the audience. Honestly, is there any way your type of comment makes sarcasm more enjoyable for everyone else? We get it
- nugget 11y agoSomeone will acquire them. The brand and employees are worth a billion dollars, in my opinion. Local is a very difficult market to crack.
- nostrademons 11y agoData as well. I can think of at least three companies worth $100B+ (and several worth $1B+) that would love to have comprehensive reviews of nearly every local business in the U.S.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- neptunespear 11y agoWhy is Yelp untouchable by the FTC or DoJ? The company gets up to some really shady stuff but hasn't faced much punishment if any.
- pgrote 11y agoWhat is the shady stuff?
- aggie 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp#Alleged_manipulation_by_Yelp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yelp#Alleged_manipulation_by_Y...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- logicallee 11y ago>What is the shady stuff? just Google it [1] (by the way everything you see there is an analogy, people don't mean that it's literally associated with the actual mafia, it's still a tech company run by white-collar people just like me and you, people just object to the business model and want someone to get them to stop. there are no guns or the like involved, it's not what people mean. just tactics.) just read these links: [2] from here on Hacker News going way, way back. choice quote "Yelp has been routinely hiding bad reviews and fixing good reviews to the top. It is a total scam and a total extortion scheme for local businesses." from 1385 days ago (3.7 yrs so 2012) - [Edit: among large tech companies/startups that get discussed heavily] it's literally the only tech company anyone utters within the same breath as extortion or mafia. let's compare: a lot of people complain about PayPal, or things like eBay's fees or whatever. But nobody complains about any company literally running an extortion racket using mafia tactics. Yelp is absolutely unique in receiving this charge. [among the type of companies I mention] of course whenever it happens its old CTO or whoever will come here and be like, 'noooo I would have known man no way. founder here. not even a little bit. nu-uh.' you can go find that quote if you want, it's why I started the second search above, but I realized I don't actually care. :) [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=yelp+mafia https://www.google.com/search?q=yelp+mafia [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=yelp&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=yelp&sort=byPopularity&prefix&...
- bcook 11y agoDownvoters should be required to cite their reasoning. This would presumaby hinder illogical, kneejerk, emotional downvotes. We are here to learn & understand (perhaps painfully), not anonymously persecute. Edit: I did not consciously realize the parent was "logicallee". ;)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pvg 11y agoDownvoting is hardly persecution. It just means someone doesn't like your comment. They don't owe you an explanation and the site's author has explicitly stated one is not required. Think of what would happen if every downvote of a low-quality comment had to come with a polite note justifying the action. Noise explosion.
- danenania 11y agoOn the other hand, downvoting isn't really supposed to reflect dislike or disagreement, but rather a comment that is rude, lacks substance or, is otherwise against the guidelines. Unfortunately this rule seems to be pretty universally ignored on HN these days. I'll generally re-upvote any reasonable post that I see has been downvoted simply due to expressing a contentious opinion, even if I also happen to disagree.
- pvg 11y agoIt's very much also supposed to reflect those. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
- bcook 11y agoIt is is bit off-putting that you think anything that you downvote will only respond with "noise explosion". Groupthink much?
- 11y ago
- kevindeasis 11y agoWow, there are soo many resignations happening this week! I am stunned. Anyone have articles on how this happened and what it means?
- finance-geek 11y agoI was thinking the same, but it is earnings season in a down market...
- awqrre 11y agoDo they all know that a crash is coming?
- noobermin 11y agoIt's almost as if everyone wants to see a crash. It's funny how crashes are almost psychological play at times. I hate "yo" as much as the next guy, but the pain of seeing a significant depreciation in wages for anyone far out weighs the joy I'd see from having my "gut feelings" about a bubble being proved right.
- kzhahou 11y agoHow many Yo's have we actually had? Not many.
- luckydata 11y agoIn my case I'm completely shut out of a crazy real estate market in Silicon Valley with a small child to accomodate, and gloomy prospects if we ever get evicted. I'm a tech worker and I make a very nice salary, and I can't wait for a crash to take some of the crazy money out of the equation.
- _dominic 11y agoUnless you have big cash savings, i don't see how you can benefit from a crash.
- perseusprime11 11y agoYelp is kind of stuck like Twitter. Product is not shaping up well. I am not sure how they plan to grow without improving their product. Their mobile app still kinda sucks
- thrownaway2424 11y agoThey're not helping themselves by having a mobile website that's intentionally crippled in order to force users to the app. They need a top-shelf mobile web experience.
- sync 11y agoI don't understand, why hasn't the product changed at all?? There seem to be some obvious wins, e.g. personalization... but no movement at all.
- badusername 11y agoTheir mobile app is one of the most poorly designed and poorly executed major tech products out there. For a company that hires probably a thousand engineers, there has been very little improvements on the web and mobile properties in over 4 years. For a product that's innately social, local and realtime, it has missed most of the enabled affordances of years past. I'm surprised that there isn't much competition. I was traveling recently, and found Zomato's app to be much superior.
- dschiptsov 11y agoThe second dotcom bubble is finally abouy to burst? Github, Twitter, LinkedIn, PayPal issue and bunch of small ones.
- kloncks 11y agoSerious question. Yelp's revenue model is a bad conflict of interest. They rank the destinations AND the destinations have to buy advertising too. What revenue model could they do that would work and not be shady? I can't think of one. Charge users?
- dudus 11y agoHow is this different from google or Yahoo? I heard they also accept payments to remove bad reviews, but I'm not sure it's true. That would be a worse conflict in my opinion.
- ziszis 11y agoIt's not that strange. Google does the same more or less. Search for "insurance" on Google. Google ranks a bunch of insurance companies: Geico, Statefarm, etc. They also show ratings for some specific agents. Google also sells ads if you want to drive more traffic and not just be in the organic listings. You can find nuanced differences between Yelp and Google, but the problem is not conflict of interest. The problem is that businesses are not seeing enough value in the ad product that Yelp offers. Many advertisers dislike Google, yet they still advertise.
- _dominic 11y agoit's pretty much google and every other search engine model. I believe competition it's the only thing that can make it not shady.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- aaxe 11y agoA great read before people get on the "Yelp removes bad reviews if you pay" bandwagon: http://screenwerk.com/2016/02/02/reviews-rashomon-plumber-remembers-yelp-threat-that-never-actually-occurred/ http://screenwerk.com/2016/02/02/reviews-rashomon-plumber-re...
- stordoff 11y agoI'm not on the bandwagon (I don't use Yelp regardless, and I suspect long-term it would be damaging to the brand if good Yelp reviews don't correlate with good experiences), but the evidence Yelp present here is hardly cast-iron. I can see a number of ways such a suggestion could be made without it being evident in those recordings, such as: - [Unlikely] Recordings have been edited, or certain recordings not disclosed - Additional contact before/after this series of interactions where review removal was discussed - Threats not made to this plumber, but another company/plumber who passed on a warning - Raised by the plumber, and so not recorded ("Will you remove my bad reviews if I advertise with you?" "Yes, sir, we will do that" sounds perfectly benign if you only hear the Yelp end) - [Not Yelp's fault, though could warn against(?)] Scam by a third party - Attempting to blackmail the plumber by pretending to be Yelp and threatening to post bad / remove good reviewss
- jmckib 11y agoIf that doesn't convince you, how about this independent study showing that Yelp's filtering algorithm doesn't treat advertisers' reviews differently than non-advertisers'? http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/12/harvard-study-debunks-yelp-extortion-conspiracy-theory-yelp-doesnt-extort.html http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/12/harvard-study-debunks-y...
- josephjrobison 11y agoI'm 90% sure that the people calling about removing bad review are shady marketing services companies that are offering this. The same thing happens with Google. Someone says "hi I'm your local Google specialist..." They're not exactly claiming to be from Google, but it's confusing to an offline small business owner that thinks Google is calling them. I've heard many of these messages for Google. I don't recall any from Yelp, but if you have any friends or family that claim that Yelp is doing so - ask to listen to the recording. I wouldn't be surprised if it's some other company claiming they can help. I too have heard from a few businesses telling me directly that they don't trust Yelp and they know someone who got threatened. But like the parent comment said, it's hard to find a direct link. At the end of the day it's shady businesses claiming to be a Yelp or Google specialist that are muddying the waters from what I can tell.
- mark_l_watson 11y agoThe top three stories on hacker news right now are about top management resignations in three high profile tech companies. Earlier, LinkedIn lost 40% of their value in a day. Deutch Bank lost 11% of their value today. sorry to be off topic here, but these seem like crazy times.
- option_greek 11y agoCould it be that the air encased in a thin spherical film of soap be escaping all over the tech market ?
- mark_l_watson 11y agoI agree but I also think it is a larger scale problem. like the whole planet.
- hitlery4dictatr 11y agoSomeone's been reading too much zerohedge.
- xyzzy4 11y agoDo you think the companies that have healthy price to earnings ratios are in a bubble?
- raverbashing 11y agoMost people will deny a bubble exists until it's incontrovertible, while they keep saying their "twitter for pets" is really worth 1bi USD.
- kristopolous 11y agoWe have to be open to the modest return, small business dot coms. A company of say, 20 people, each making about 150k or so and being completely satisfied with the state of things. I think there's a culture of expecting reasonable businesses to seek unreasonable goals. Until the valley can move from "always dream big" to "well sometimes, just plan sensibly", it will be perpetually unstable. I remember a strip mall across from a corporate office park. Every couple months, a new .com would go in and another would go out of business, but in the strip mall the same places had been there for 20 years. The web isn't going anywhere, there's nothing wrong with providing for the long term.
- ryanSrich 11y agoHonest question. How do you know you're in the middle of a bubble bursting?
- chadzawistowski 11y agoWhen it's become so obvious that everyone is asking the question.
- alanwatts 11y agoWhat exactly do you mean by "bubble"?
- jack9 11y agoIt aint his fault, so he must have another opportunity.
- bpg_92 11y agoThese seems worring indeed, are some bubble poping now? Maybe it's just overreacting, but hopefully the trend won't continue.
- dang 11y agoIt's likely just random, with the human bias to read patterns into randomness hot on its trail as always.
- ececconi 11y agoI've replaced Yelp with Foursquare a while ago for finding things around me and trusting reviews. I've found that the character limit and smaller user base of Foursquare makes reading reviews a much more pleasant experience. I also like how there is no star system on Foursquare.