Yelp: Jeremy Stoppelman
Naomi Elliott for NPR
In 2004, two former Paypal engineers, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russ Simmons, were spit-balling new internet ideas.
Out of their brainstorm came a site where you would email your friends asking for local business recommendations.
The launch was a flop, but they discovered that people seemed to enjoy writing reviews not just for friends, but for the general public.
Fifteen years later, Yelp is a publicly traded company with more than 4,000 employees and over 140 million monthly visitors.
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