Russel Simmons

Russ co-founded Yelp Inc. in July 2004 with former colleague and friend Jeremy Stoppelman.

Prior to Yelp, Russ was one of the early employees and the lead software architect at PayPal. He led a team of top engineers on critical projects related to security, scalability, stability, and internationalization as the company scaled rapidly. Following his time at PayPal, Russ joined Max Levchin's (co-founder of PayPal) incubator, where he teamed up with Jeremy.

Russ holds a B.S. in computer science from the University of Illinois.