Yelp hires new CFO, pointing to plans for 2011 IPO?

Rob Krolik, former CFO for Move, Inc., joins Yelp

In a move that points to Yelp’s desire to go public, the popular local review service has hired a new CFO.  Rob Krolik, former CFO for Move, Inc., joins Yelp today as its new Chief Financial Officer, according to an announcement the company made Friday morning.

Krolik’s experience with finance and large online companies is extensive and pretty impressive.  Since July 2009, Krolik has been the CFO of Move, Inc., which owns Move.com, a site that contains listings for apartments, rentals, houses for sale, and senior housing.  The site currently averages some 14.5 million unique visitors a month, and the company also owns popular real estate site REALTOR.com.  At Move, Inc., Krolik was charged with the company’s turnaround efforts by reconfiguring the capital structure and scaling the business.

Prior to his role at Move, Krolik was the VP of Finance for eBay from 2005 to 2009, and the CFO/VP of Finance for Shopping.com from 2004 to 2006.

“As Yelp’s CFO, Rob will oversee corporate finance, accounting, investor relations and real estate functions,” said Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman in a blog post, adding: “Suffice it to say that we’re excited to bring this Silicon Valley veteran into the fold, for what will no doubt be a very exciting ride.  Welcome to the team, Rob!”

That “exciting ride” could very well be Yelp’s IPO, which would join the ranks of all the other high-profile IPOs of 2011, including LinkedIn, Pandora, Demand Media, Groupon, and Zynga.  Yelp could not be reached for comment.

Founded in 2004 with a $1 million round of Series A funding from PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, the company has raised $131 million to date, including a $100 million investment from Elevation Partners in January 2010, which valued the company at $475 million. Just one month prior to the funding, Yelp had been in talks with Google about a possible $550 million buy-out, in a story that sounds very familiar…

Earlier this month, Yelp announced its 20 millionth review.  The site had one million reviews in 2007, which grew to 10 million reviews as of 2010, which means Yelp reviews have doubled in only one year (likely due to the increased spending on marketing and advertising that the company promised for its $100 million investment from Elevation).  The site currently gets 53 million unique visitors a month.

Image source: LinkedIn.com