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Yotpo – Social Reviews for eCommerce websites
The idea of Yotpo emerged after Tomer had a very bad shopping experience. Being a geek, his friends counted on him to find the best camera possible on the budget they had. So Tomer searched online and found a camera that based on recommendations from some anonymous users should’ve been a great purchase. He was very angry when he’s friend who got the camera said that his photography teacher described it as low quality and probably the worst ROI possible.
This pain Tomer felt made him go on a venture to make online product reviews more reliable, and this begat Yotpo – a platform for e-commerce sites that transforms reviews into a marketing platform.
The name Yotpo stands for “Your Opinion The Public Opinion” and it was chosen because the domain was available. The slogan changed many times since then, but the name stayed the same.
Tomer met Omri, Yotpo’s other co-founder, at Tel Aviv University. They were studying together electrical engineering and computer science. The first step they took when they decided to take on this venture, was learning everything they can about e-commerce reviews. They were not accustomed to leaving comments on products themselves and didn’t understand the motives behind that, so they analyzed dozens of top reviews on big websites, talked with lots of business owners, and even contacted the reviewers themselves. This first step proved itself to be the right one, and even a crucial one.