Taking risks on the abortion issue
The San Francisco-based online reviews site Yelp is among the handful of companies covering travel costs for employees and their dependents who must travel out of state to obtain an abortion, a thorny topic that’s poised to become the chatter of many boardrooms if the Supreme Court overturns the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The Associated Press recently spoke with the company’s CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, about it and other topics.
Do you have any fears the company’s support of abortion rights is going to put it in the crosshairs of conservative politicians?
There’s always a risk with taking a stand. But our calculus is: this is one worth taking. It’s really important to our employees, especially our female employees. And I think it does have quite broad support.
Why do you think many major companies have stayed quiet on this issue?
I think it’s really disappointing to say the least. If you go back prior to the Trump administration, there was a lot of advocacy on the part of CEOs and the companies behind them. They were speaking out on important issues, whether it was bathroom bills or on small businesses trying to discriminate. Perhaps what happened was in the Trump era, there was an element of risk and reaction from the administration. I think it created a bit of a silencing effect when it comes to corporate leaders speaking out. I don’t think that changed our behavior.
You’ve been an advocate of antitrust reform. What do you think are the prospects of getting something done in Congress this year?
I think the general tone in Washington is a sea change from the past. There is a particular bill by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar that we support, which is anti self-preferencing. One of the most egregious behaviors of Big Tech is when they have a competing property or product of their own, they interject and steer consumers away. And I think that’s very destructive to competition. We think Senate Majority Leader Schumer has the votes to get it passed. So we really think it’s time to bring it to the floor. He suggested it will happen early summer, so we look forward to that.
The administration has said there could be about 100 million COVID-19 cases later this year. How are you expecting the site to be impacted?
If there’s a terrible variant, people get scared and huddle inside. When it gets safer, people go out more. So it can have effects on the business. But we have been in recovery mode for some time now, and people are trying to get on with their lives and move past the virus. But it’s hard to predict whether the virus will truly fade into the background.
One thing that’s always been true about Yelp is that our platform is broad-based so when consumer spending shifts, say from restaurants to something else, that other category is often captured somewhere else on Yelp.