[6] As a child Stoppelman had an interest in computers and business[7][8] and began investing in stocks at the age of 14.

[11][12][13] Stoppelman left PayPal after its 2003 acquisition by eBay and attended Harvard Business School for one year.

[9][17][18] In the summer of 2004, Jeremy Stoppelman got the flu[19] and had a hard time finding recommendations for a local doctor.

He and former PayPal colleague, Russel Simmons, who was also working at MRL Ventures,[11] began brainstorming on how to create an online community where users could share recommendations for local services.

[18][20][21] Under Stoppelman's leadership, Yelp grew to a market capitalization of $4 billion and hosted 138 million user reviews.

[4][12] In February 2013, Stoppelman accepted a salary of $1, though he continues to earn income from the investment of his 11 percent interest in the company.

[27] In 2016, an open letter on Medium to Stoppelman by a San Francisco employee of Yelp subsidiary Eat24, Talia Jane, went viral, describing how she and her coworkers struggled on their wages to afford groceries or winter heating in the Bay Area.

[32] Stoppelman is a "voracious" non-fiction reader,[7][10] and his brother Michael previously worked at Yelp as Senior Vice President of Engineering.

[35] He lobbied other tech executives to join him in encouraging local governments to build more housing near universities.